LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Shelf .i.W.3. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




i 



GENESIS I. 



AND 



MODERN SCIENCE 



We will, if you please, test this view in the light of facts. — Prof. 
Huxley, New York Lectures 

Hast thou appealed unto Caesar? Unto Caesar thou shalt go. — Acts 



/ 



By CHARLES B. WARRING, Ph.D. 



AUTHOR OF 



The Miracle of To-Day ; Genesis and its Critics : Miracle, La%v, and E'oo- 
lution ; Geological Climate: etc., etc. 

Metnber Neiv York Academy of Science^ Associate Meviber Philosophical 
Society of Great Britain, Member Vassar Brothers^ Institute 




NEW YORK: HUNT &- EATON 
CINCINNATI: CRANSTON &- STOWE 

I«92 



J 



no ; 



■W2 



Copyright, 1892, by 

HUNT & EATON, 

New York. 



to 



^rr-:> 



TO 

ASTRONOMERS AND GEOLOGISTS, 

TO WHOM THE WORLD IS INDEBTED FOR ALL THAT IS KNOWN OF THE 

PRE-HUMAN HISTORY OF OUR GLOBE, AND FOR THE 

POSSIBILITY OF TESTING THE TRUTH OF 

THE BIBLE STORY OF CREATION, 

THIS BOOK IS 



^zz^ztiMl^ B^IruattJj. 



IT ASKS ONLY FAIR DEALING, 

AND THAT ITS OWN MISTAKES SHALL NOT BE CHARGED TO THE 

ACCOUNT OF WHICH IT TREATS. 



C. B. WARRING. 



POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y., 

January lo 



:, N. Y., ) 



CONTENTS. 



PREFATORY. ^^^^ 

The question stated 9 

The kind of jury entitled to decide it 9 

Professor Huxley's New York lectures 11 

The flexibility of science 12 

The lack of a brief story of creation by scientists 14 

Dr. Draper's Conflict^ etc 15 

The " defense by the Professor weak " 17 

As to a change of inclination of the earth's axis 18 

This story resembles annals, and not memoirs 19 

Christians sick of harmonies and reconciliations 20 

An objection by a Christian scientist 23 

Is literality possible ?...... 24 

A fact to be remembered, namely, that Genesis was not given 

to teach science 25 

A chart of the world's history 2t 



THE PROFESSOR. 

Description of the Professor 30 

The extent and source of the Professor's knowledge of Genesis. 32 

Our agreement 34 

The rules we agreed upon 35 

Dr. Draper's view of what a revelation should do. 37 



OUR FIRST EVENING. Gen. i, 1-5. 

Some of the books we used 39 

Study of the first verse. " In the beginning " 40 

Three errors 42 

" Without form and void " .^ 43 

A denial which would be fatal to nebular hypothesis 44 



4 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Fourth error 44 

Fifth error 46 

*' And darkness was upon the face of the deep " 47 

Sixth error. " Darkness a substance " 48 

Same origin of force as of motion , 49 

Seventh objection. No such early waters 49 

Eighth objection. " This is too much hke the Talmudists " 55 

^inth objection. " Yerbal agreements with science are mere ac- 
cidents " 56 

Tenth objection. " Light pronounced good too soon " 57 

Tlie order here a matter of great importance 59 

The progress from universal light to present days and nights. . . 59 

Eleventh error. " All was done in one short day " 64 

Twelfth error QQ 

Thirteenth error (now obsolete). Light placed independent of 

the sun 67 



OUR SECOND EVENING. Gen. i, 6-8. 

Yitally important to science that verses 1 to 5 should be true. . . 68 

Objection 14. " Moses does not mean exactly as he says".. ... 71 

Objection 15. ** Matter and force are eternal " 71 

The story from geology of the azoic part of the earth's progress. 72 

What phenomenon marked the end of this stage ? 74 

Objection 16. " A literal Genesis leads to an absurdity, namely, 

sun, moon, and stars were somewhere in the air " 76 

Objection 17. " A solid firmament " 78 

Article from Bihliotheca Sacra, the firmament, a full discus- 
sion 79 

Eighteenth error. *' The expanse made in twenty-four hours ". . 94 

Objection 19. Such literahsm leads to absurdity 95 

The firmament not pronounced " good," and why ? 96 



OUR THIRD EVENING. Gen. i, 9-13. 

The ninth verse. The land and water 98 

What geologists say 99 

Twentieth error. '' Moses says the dry land appeared in only a 

few hours " 100 



CONTENTS, 5 

PAGE 

Note on the completion of the land 102 

" Good." Its appropriateness here 103 

Twenty-first error. "The order is wrong." Moses puts the 
continents before any plants, and all plants before any ani- 
mals, and all water animals and birds before cattle " 105 

Twenty-second error, " Mos'es puts fruit-trees, as well as grass, 
before the sun." lOt 



OUR FOURTH EVENING. Gen. i, 14-19. 

THE FOURTH PERIOD. 

Twenty-third error. *' The place of the sun is wrong " 110 

The difficulty of this topic. Solutions proposed Ill 

My course. " I first sought to know just what it was that Moses 

said" 114 

A discussion of, " Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven " 114 
A peculiar Hebrew idiom in the use of lahmed before infinite. . 116 

Note. Kosenmiiller on this phrase 117 

What was done ? Change of inclination of axis 119 

Two scientific objections : (1) All forces affecting the inclination 
of the axis are compensative ; (2) with axis perpendicular 
polar regions would receive less heat rays than they do now. 123 

Present incUnation unaccountable by science 124 

Proof from paleontology of such change near the close of ter- 
tiary 125 

The occurrence of seasons in very early times proved by existence 

of early growth rings 128 

Answer from article in American Journal of Science proving 

*' rings " independent of seasons 128 



OUR FIFTH EVENING. 
THE FOURTH PERIOD CONTINUED. 

The command to the " lights in the firmament of heaven". . . . 131 

" To divide." For signs. Seasons 131 

Objection 24. " Seasons" here does not mean tlie astronomical 

seasons 133 



6 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Objection 24*. " God did not make the sun so late " 138 

Objection 25. "Too much meaning attached to the words, 

' And it was so '" 140 

Objection 26. "If the sun was not made after fruit-trees, etc., 
then the order of the story is not the order of nature, for 
the story speaks of sun, moon, and stars only after it has 
spoken of those plants " 141 

Objection 21. "Then God has misled people, contrary to his 

truthfulness " 143 

Objection 28. " Then if God does not tell of the creation of 

these in the fourth period he has left that out altogether "... 145 



OUR SIXTH EVENING. 

THE earth's rank IN THE UNIVERSE. 

Error 29. " Moses regards the earth as the center of the uni- 
verse " , 148 

Error 30. Moses says, "Sun and moon were made merely to 

give light to our earth " 149 

The inhabitabihty of other worlds 151 

Objection 31. "It seems absurd that the sun was made for the 

little earth " 155 

Christ's coming here is a greater marvel than that 156 



OUR SEVENTH EVENING. GGn. i, 20-23. 

ANIMALS. 

Objection 82. " The world thinks this story means that before 

fishes and birds there was no life at all " 158 

" All that Moses says as to animals, water, air, or land " 159 

Be la Saporta's evidence. 159 

Dana's and others 160 

" Moses says nothing of the first introduction of life " 160 

Objection 33. Organic hfe a new thing on our globe 161 

Objection 34. " Moses represents animals as made direcUy and 

abruptly from earth, air, and water " 162 



CONTENTS. 7 

PAGE 

Abruptness, an eminent characteristic of the p^eological record.. . 164 

Objection 35. " Scientists are unwilling to admit divine interpo- 
sition " 166 

" Ordinary law and special law " 167 

Error 36. " In error placing Adam only six thousand years 

back" 168 

Error 37. " The Bible teaches that the earth is flat and immov- 
able, and that there are no antipodes " 170 

Objection 38. " This is not the Genesis in which the world has 

believed " 171 

What this account is 174 



OUR EIGHTH EVENING. 

" Good" does not here refer to moral character, but to use or fit- 
ness. A study of all cases where it occurs 178 

A table of all its appheations and omissions 184 



OUR NINTH EVENING. 

SUXDRY IMPORTANT MATTERS. 

The " days." Theories of 186 

The fourth commandment 189 

An historical illustration of the meaning of the days 190 

Six natural stages of development 191 

What this chapter really is 194 

Dr. Draper's statement as to what a revelation should do 196 

My method of studying this account 198 

God's purpose in giving it 200 

(1) To set forth his Creatorship 200 

(2) To impress on man the duty of observing the Sabbath 200 

(3) To set forth God as a person, and not mere force 201 

(4) To authenticate the divine origin of the Bible 202 

" A Hymn of Creation " 204 

Its remarkable character 205 



8 CONTENTS, 

PAGE 

How it was given to Moses 207 

A resume of this story o » » 210 

List of errors often charged to this account o... 212 

Gladstone's and Professor Huxley's articles In Nineteenth Century. 212 



SUNDRY PAPERS. 

Dr, Draper's test, or the foreshado wings in this story 214 

The traditional Grenesis 217 

The Babylonian legend of creation not the source of the Bible 

account 221 

This account not the work of some ancient scientist 240 



GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE." 



-♦-♦►♦- 



PREFATORY, 



With most scientists it is no longer good form to 
regard the first chapter of Genesis as any thing more 
tlian a poem, the work of a wise but uninspired man. 
High authority advises the " students of science no 
longer to trouble themselves with these theologies, for 
their statements are false and their order is wrong." 

On this I join issue, and propose, as Professor 
Huxley says, "to test this view in the ^-jury of ex- 
light of facts." t As the questions Perts desired. 

whicli arise are questions in astronomy, geology, 
and other departments of natural science, nothing 
better can be desired than that tliey should be de- 
cided by a jury of experts in these studies. In 

* This paper originally appeared in The Living Church. It has been 
rewritten in part, but not essentially changed. 

f " Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be 
assembled : who among them can . . . show us former things ? let them 
bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified: or let them 
hear, and say, It is truth." — Isa. xliii, 0, 



10 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

trials involving commercial law it is desirable to get 
a jury familiar with its principles. In questions of 
maritime law experts in tliat department are songlit. 
In questions of mechanics or engineering men who 
are to decide them ought to have a knowledge of 
their principles. Witli equal justice it is claimed that 
men acquainted with science are best qualified — I 
should say ought to be best qualified — to j udge of the 
character of a document purporting to state facts in 
the antehuman history of our world. The desirableness 
of such a jury needs, however, a twofold qualifica- 
tion. First, that the " science" which they hold is itself 
true. The world has seen an amazing amount of " sci- 
ence" which, it is now told, is rubbish; and it very 
strongly inclines to the belief that much which is held 
in biology, atomics, and other metaphysico-physics will 
eventually prove to belong to the same class. And, 
secondly, they must be so clear-sighted as not to mis- 
take their own ignorance for negative evidence, since 
there are many matters of which science as yet knows 
nothing. They must also be so honest as to be willing 
to give a verdict in accordance with the evidence, even 
though it overturn some favorite theory or tend to 
establish the reality of that "impossible" thing, a 
revelation. One, for example, who advocates the 
nebular hypothesis and scouts theologians for not ac- 
cepting it, but declares Moses contradicts science when 
he says that the earth was once without form and void ; 



PREFATORY. 11 

or one who, admitting it to be true elsewhere, that 
darkness preceded motion and that motion preceded 
light, denies it in the story of creation, is too much 
nnder the influence of prejudice to serve on such a 
jnry. I would set him aside. 

It would only be following the example of every 
court of justice to require the jury to answer simply 
guilty, or not guilty, or the Scotch verdict of not 
proven, to each count. Did the judge permit each 
juror to make a speech instead of uttering a simple 
yes or no, the matter in dispute would become so in- 
volved in a cloud of words that no conclusion would 
be reached. 

A very serious embarrassment meets us at the start. 
There is no authoritative statement in 

Prof essor Hux- 

which are gathered the facts which w^ill ley's New York 

rrn • • T 1 lectures. 

be needed. Ibis is greatly to be regretted. 
Feeling this keenly, I availed myself, a few years ago, 
of the announcement in the papers that so high an au- 
thority, and one so free from suspicion of theological 
bias as Professor Huxley, was about to deliver a course 
of lectures in New York on matters pertaining to the 
early earth-history, and wrote a letter to the I^ew 
YotTc Tribune.^ from which the following is an extract : 
" I am sure tliat all will join in the wish that Pro- 
fessor Huxley would give an outline of what is known 
of the antehuman history of the globe. In the nature 
of the case it should set forth only the most salient 



12 GENESIS I, AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

points, and should treat solely of those matters as to 
which there is no longer any doubt. In other words, 
it should avoid theorips and state facts. It would not 
be too much to ask the distinguished Professor to 
clothe his account in simple language, that those not 
versed in science may understand." 

The motive for this request was stated to be a de- 
sire to compare the account of creation given by so 
eminent a scientist with that which Moses lias left on 
record, and which, right or wrong, so many believe 
to be true. 

It is greatly to be regretted that Professor Huxley 
did not comply with this request. Instead, he repeated 
the story of creation which is found in Paradise Lost^ 
adding, with ill-concealed irony, " I do not for one mo- 
ment venture to say that this could properly be called 
the biblical doctrine." And then, referring to conflicts 
of opinion and changes of exposition among writers 
on Genesis, he adds a sneering fling at the ^' marvelous 
flexibility of the Hebrew" — a fling which comes with 
peculiarly ill grace from a scientist, for the theories 
of scientists are ever changing. 

The reader will flnd no difficulty in recalling in- 
The"flexibiii- stauccs of the ''flexibility" of science. 
ty" of science, rj.^ ^^^ nothing of old examples, one of 

recent date will suffice. 

A few years ago it was the fashionable "sci- 
ence" — for '' science" has its fashions — to say that 



PREFATORY. 13 

the different races of men could not have descended 
from one pair. It is easy to recall the arguments 
so glibly used. '' The hair of the Caucasian is specif- 
ically different from the wool of the Negro." Tlien 
there was " the broad shin-bone, the long heel, and 
the thick skull." If one ventured to regard these 
as insufficient he was sneeringly told that no one 
of any standing as a scientist believed in the unity 
of tlie race. It was clear to these gentlemen that 
the "anonymous author of Genesis" had no "sci- 
ence," and consequently that he blundered grossly 
when he represented mankind as sprung from one 
pair. Theologians, as usual, showed their inability to 
rise above their traditions, and take broader and more 
reasonable view^s, and accept the true " scientific " doc- 
trine that the human family was descended from an 
unknown number of independent pairs. So at least 
we were told again and again, and all the opponents 
of revelation said, " Out upon such bigotry and 
folly ! " 

But to-day scientists tell the world that " After all, 
men have originated from a conmion center," and 
then a vice-president of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science adds tlie fling, " And 
now the Church is no better satisfied."'^ The learned 
vice-president well knows tliat the Chnrch is not dis- 

* Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science^ 1876, p. 145. 



14 GENESIS LAND MODERN SCIENCE. 

satisfied with tlie conclusion of which he spoke, but 
with another and w^idelj different one, namely, that 
men, and brutes, and plants, too, are descended without 
supernatural help from some one or more original 
cells which somehow got into existence — a matter of 
spontaneous development, as if the refuse of a lime- 
kiln should turn into a Yenus de' Medici ! It may be 
that I am blind, but it seems to me far easier, and far 
more in accord with the experience of mankind, to 
believe that such changes are the result of intelligent 
will rather than of law without intelligence or will to 
enforce it. 

This, however, is not the time to discuss evolution. 
I am a believer in it — for example, a ship from a 
canoe ; farms from prairies ; the telescope from the 
play with spectacles of the Dutch optician's children; 
and in thousands of other instances. 

But I have wandered from Professor Huxley and his 
lectures. I return merely to say that he ostensibly left 
Moses and attacked Milton, but with the assumption 
constantly prominent that he was demolishing the 
former. 

I now renew the request made in the Wew Torlc 
Trihune — I have made it many times — and ask any 
scientist of the School of Professor Huxley to give, in 
his own way and in plain English, the early history 
of the world. I ask him to place the facts, so far as 
known, in their true order, and beg him not to wander 



PREFATORY. 15 

away to matters of which Genesis says nothing ; since, 
however important they may be, they would distract 
the reader's attention and draw him from the question. 
If such a history shoukl be written all intelligent 
persons could see in what consist the " gross errors " 
of Moses. This surely is not too much to ask of 
those who are constantly lauding " science " at the ex- 
pense of the Bible. But I fear it will never be done. 
Is it not time that those who scout this account should 
do something more than talk about its falsehoods and 
come to particulars, and show in its own words just 
what it is that is contradicted by science ? It will 
not do to quote, as did Professor Huxley, what 
Milton or Father Suarez says Moses said, or intended 
to say. No court of justice would for one moment 
accept such evidence when the original documents 
were at hand. 

I have looked in vain through Dr. Draper's His- 
tory of the Conflict hetween Religion and ^^ ^^^ ^^.^ 
Science, thinking that so able a writer, Coniaa be- 

, tweenRelig- 

who had become, as he himself assures us, ion and Scu 
" accustomed to the comparison of con- 
flicting statements, the adjustment of conflicting 
claims," would tell his readers plainly what it is in 
the Mosaic cosmogony which conflicts with science. 
The indictment which he has drawn does not meet 
the expectations excited by the title of his book. To 
be sure, he mentions several matters about which 



16 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

there have been fierce disputes, as, for example, the 
length of time since the creation of the earth ; the 
shape of the world, whether flat or spherical ; the 
existence of antipodes ; whether animals died before 
the fall, etc. ; but as the Mosaic cosmogony does not 
say one word about any of them their relevancy is 
far from apparent. 

Although Professor Huxley did not give that out- 
line of the world's history asked for, yet he placed 
upon record three statements of great importance in 
this discussion, which the reader will do well to bear 
carefully in mind. He told his hearers, as the teach- 
ings of the most advanced science, that '' The world 
had a beginning ; " and that " The physical form of 
the earth can be traced back to a condition in which 
its parts w^ere separated as little more tlian a neb- 
ulous cloud, making part of a whole in which we 
find the sun and the planetary bodies also resolved ;" 
and that " All that is now dry land was once at the 
bottom of the sea." The interest in these statements 
does not arise from their novelty, but from their clear 
enunciation of facts essential to a comprehension of 
the Mosaic story. 

The remainder of Professor Huxley's lectures may 
or may not have been in harmony with the actual 
history of our planet ; its discussion would be out of 
place here, since it has little to do with the story in 
the first cliapter of Genesis, the fossils of which he 



PREFATORY. 77 

spoke long antedating the " living " creatures of that 
account. 

In this essay I have been able to speak of only a 
part of the many interesting subjects more or less 
directly referred to in the first two chapters of Gen- 
esis. A few years ago I put out a volume entitled 
The Mosaic Account of Creation^ the Miracle of 
To-day^ in which 1 discussed many matters not 
spoken of here. The present is a more extended 
study of a particular portion of the subjects consid- 
ered in that book. I have put it in the foi*m of a 
conversation, because I was thus enabled more easily 
to bring in the objections which have been made by 
others, or which have occurred to myself. If the 
reader thinks the ''Professor" offers 

The Profes- 

a weak defense of his side, I agree with sor's weak de- 

fpiise 

him. But I submit that the weakness 
is inherent in the nature of the case. It must 
be remembered that, by the rules which we adopted, 
he was not permitted to indulge in a priori disquisi- 
tions on the reality of miracles ; or on the possibility 
of a revelation ; or as to whether we can know any 
thing of God ; or whether the second chapter of 
Genesis contradicts the first ; or whether Moses wrote 
the account, or Ezra; or whether there were two 
writers, an Elohistic and a Jehovistic, or any other 
matter outside of these two questions: Are the phys- 
ical statements in the first twenty-seven verses true? 



18 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

and is their order correct ? It is surprising how these 
limitations cause objections to disappear. 

Most persons seem to think, when they have devised 
a scheme by which to obtain the time-space needed 
by astronomy and geology, that little remains to be 
done to explain the whole account. This is a great 
mistake. There are in it many other questions which 
demand attention, some perhaps even more difficult, 
as will appear hereafter. 

At first it may appear easy enough to get along if 
we hold the Mosaic story to be an allegory ; but on 
a fair trial such an hypothesis wdll be found to in- 
volve more difficulties than it avoids. 

If it be objected that certain conclusions in this 
Conclusions as cssay pertaining to the inclination of the 
inciinauon of ©artli's axis have not been adopted by 
earth's axis. scientific men, I beg leave to say that I 
am well aware of it, but, nevertheless, I believe them 
to be true. They were in no case made to force a 
harmony or to eke out an argument, but rest upon 
facts and reasons which seem impossible to be ex- 
plained in any other way. The most important of 
these will be laid before the reader when we come to 
consider the fourth period. 

Whether there has been an increase in the obliquity 
of the earth's axis since the middle of the pliocene 
has a very important bearing upon the explanation 
here offered of the work of the fourth creative stage, 



PREFATORY. 19 

while in no degree affecting other parts of the nar- 
rative. And if my proposed exposition should turn 
out to be erroneous it would merely leave the fourth 
period among questions which await solution. 

A writer in the BihliotheGa Sacra^ who favors my 
Mosaic Account of Creation with a notice, 

This story an- 

repeats, with apparent approval, tlie re- nais, and not 

^ n (> . ^ ^ ^ ^ . memoirs. 

mark oi a iriend who, he assures his 
readers, is high authority, that I erred in comparing 
this narrative to the kind of history called annals. 
In his opinion it should have been memoirs. Why ! 
he missed the most important point in the argument, 
the niost wonderful thing in the story, its correct 
order ! " Memoirs " might do well enough for those 
who hold that this account will not bear too close 
examination. But it need shrink from no test, how- 
ever severe. The accuracy of its order will be found 
to be the crucial argument that compels belief in its 
divine origin. 

That I have rightly solved all the questions which 
I have attempted is not to be expected. The Mosaic 
story of creation has been the problem of the ages. 
I reverently offer this as a contribution to its solution. 
If the reader finds a tithe of the pleasure in its perusal 
which I have found in its preparation he will not 
regret the time spent upon it. Yet he must not ex- 
pect to master the matter without study. While a 
hasty reading may not be without profit, the value of 



20 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

the return will be in proportion to the time and 
thought spent upon it, and, I may add, in proportion 
to the reader^s knowledge of physical science. Of no 
document known to me can it be as truly said that 
its comprehension, even to the limited extent now 
possible, is in itself a liberal education as of this much 
contemned and often unfairly treated first chapter of 
Genesis. I will also say that there is no other docu- 
ment of equal brevity known to me the successful 
denial of whose statements, were that possible, would 
result in consequences so disastrous to science itself. 
The reader may smile at this as the words of an en- 
thusiast, but I appeal to the evidence which will be 
produced as we go on. 

But says some good Christian brother: "I am 
**i am sick of ^^^^ ^^ harmonies and reconciliations of 
recTncTlia- Gr^nesis and science. They have brought 
tions. ' derision on the believers in the Revelation. 

By ignoring some parts of the account and by plac- 
ing great stress upon others — by a liberal interpreta- 
tion of what Moses said by what, in their opinion, 
Moses meant to say — an agreement with ' science ' 
has again and again been laboriously forced. But 
scarcely were things ' fixed ' before it w^as discovered 
that the ' science ' to which Genesis had been twisted 
was, after all, only a theory, and was never intended 
for any thing more than a convenience to string facts 
on. It was good enough to attack the Bible with, 



PREFATORY. 21 

but of no value if taken in earnest ; in fact, was dis- 
proved by some later discovery." He begins to think 
all science is to be taken in a Pickwickian sense. 

Should such a person read these lines I would re- 
mind him that if this story be really from God its 
harmony with the world's history must become more 
and more manifest as real science advances; and, 
hence, that a time will come when the two, so far as 
they treat of the same subjects, will coincide. It is 
equally true that if men form theories and offer ex- 
planations before they have the facts on which to 
found them their work must show the marks of their 
ignorance ; and it ought not to excite surprise that so 
many such efforts have proved to be of no value. 

Whatever may be thought of certain prominent 
theories of so-called science — mostly per- ^uch known 
taining to biology — there is no doubt bLtorToT'tTe 
that vastly more of the world's actual ^^^^^* 
history is known now than, for example, in the 
days of Milton ; and, consequently, we are to that 
extent in a better position for comprehending the 
story of creation. On the other hand, if the ac- 
count in Genesis were of human invention it would 
easily square with the science of the times in which 
it was written. But when men acquired larger and 
more accurate knowledge of the past it w^ould di- 
verge more and more from the current " science," 
until, at last, the contradiction would become so ap- 



22 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

parent that no sane man could accept both as true. 
This has been the fate of all cosmogonies save the 
Mosaic. 

The question, then, is : Has the science of to-day 
made such progress that we are warranted in accept- 
ing any of its conclusions in this direction as abso- 
lute verities ? Have we any facts ? A very brief 
survey of what has been accomplished will convince 
the reader that a vast number of facts have been as- 
certained about whicb there is no longer any room 
for dispute. Many of these have become, as it were, 
a part of the warp and woof of our every-day thought, 
so that it requires an effort to realize that sensible 
men ever believed otherwise ; as, for example, that 
there are antipodes, that the earth turns on its axis 
and revolves about the sun, and that on this and the 
inclination of the axis the seasons depend. The 
school-boy of to-day laughs at the wisdom of Herod- 
otus, who tells his readers that the sun goes south 
every autumn to escape the colds and storms of win- 
ter, and returns when they are over."^ There are 
many other facts which have not yet reached all 
minds, but which are as universally admitted by those 
w^ho have given attention to such matters. Now, if 

* " During the winter the sun is driven ont of his usual course by 
the storms, and removes to the upper part of Libya. When the 
winter begins to soften, the sun goes back again to his old place in 
the middle of the heavens." — Rawlinson's Herodotus. 



PREFATORY. 28 

we take such accepted facts and compare with them 
the statements in the first chapter of Genesis it is 
evident that we may ascertain whether that account 
and the world's actual history agree so far, providing 
we neither mistake silence for contradiction nor al- 
low our own notions to modify what Moses says. 
This is all I propose to do in this book. I submit 
that results so obtained are worthy of serious consid- 
eration. 

While writing out the following conversations I 
endeavored to bring into them all the objections 
which would be appropriate in the mouth of the Pro- 
fessor ; but there is one which has been presented by 
a reader of my other book on this subject which 
does not belong to this class. This gentleman, a warm 
Christian, and of course a believer in revelation, 
writes me : " I think it is forcing the simplicity of 
Genesis to interpret it as describing with any sort 
of scientific accuracy such infinitely complex proc- 
esses as those involved in the evolution of the pres- 
ent state and relation of matter and force." My 
friend sets up w4iat he supposes a serious difficulty 
in the way of accepting my exposition of Genesis, 
and will doubtless be surprised to know that I 
agree with him that such an interpretation w^ould 
be forcing the simplicity of the account. I see 
in Genesis no attempt to describe the proc- 
esses of nature. I read that there was light ; that an 



24 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

expanse was made in the midst of the waters ; that 
the waters were gathered into one place, and that the 
dry land appeared, and that the earth brought forth 
certain kinds of vegetation ; that God made the 
lights; that the waters brought forth water ani- 
mals ; that the land bore land animals ; but not one 
word do I see as to " the infinitely complex processes 
involved." 

A letter before me asks : " In such a document is 
Is literaiity litcrality possiblc ? Could the events have 
possible? heen described by man, w^hoever the 

communicator, in language that admits of literal in- 
terpretation, considering man's imperfect knowledge 
and powers of apprehension ? " 

To this I answer : The possibility of a literal com- 
munication depends upon what it is which is to be 
communicated. The Hebrews could not have under- 
stood had Moses undertaken to tell how God created 
the heaven and the earth, and I very much suspect 
he would have no better success now, though he 
had Royal Societies and National Academies for his 
audience. But the single fact that God did create 
the heaven and the earth the Hebrews could, and, 
I may add, did, understand as well as the wisest 
moderns. 

The nebular hypothesis would have been incom- 
prehensible then, and is largely so now ; but that the 
earth was once formless and void, a fluid, and envel- 



PREFATORY. 25 

oped in darkness, are statements not difficult to com- 
prehend. The how and the why are as difficnlt now 
as then ; but of them Moses says nothing. 

It may have been impossible for the Hebrews to 
understand, no matter who the communicator, how 
the first, or any, plants were made — a matter as difii- 
cult to-day as then ; but it is easy enough to under- 
stand that grass, herbs, and fruit-trees came up at a 
certain time in obedience to the will of the Creator. 

So in regard to animals, literality is easily possible 
as to all that is here said. Literality presents no im- 
possibility so long as we do not leave the account ; 
and what other kind of literalitv is conceivable ? 

All this is equallj^ true of what we call natural 
phenomena. Nothing is easier to understand than a 
statement that after a certain number of days of in- 
cubation the young bird comes forth from the egg. 
We may watch the process and note the successive 
changes ; and the more intense our literalism the 
easier will our description be understood, and the 
greater be its value as material for the science-mill of 
the biologist ; but the how and the why that underlie 
it all will be unintelligible, and perhaps will always 
remain so. 

It is important to remember that the Bible was not 
given to man to teach him science. Inci- ^ fact to be 
dentally, as it were, it contains a vast remembered. 
amount of physical truth, but that is a very different 



26 GENESIS LAND MODERN SCIENCE. 

matter. The heavens contain all the truths of astron- 
omy, and the rocks all of geology ; but it was very long 
before there was a science of astronomy, and geology is 
only of yesterday. The story in Genesis speaks only of 
those things which all men see, and teaches that God 
made then}. This, it says, was the origin of the 
heavens above them and the earth and sea beneath, of 
the transparent expanse above and around them, of 
sun, moon, and stars, of the vegetation spread out on 
every side, of the cattle, of wild beasts, of birds, and of 
the monsters of the sea. As to all else the account is 
silent. It does not speak of the laws of gravitation, 
or of light, or of sound. Nor does it speak of intelli- 
gences of higher and more ancient order than man, 
those sons of God who shouted for joy when he laid 
the foundation of the earth, nor of the long succes- 
sion of geological horizons with plants and animals 
•preceding and unlike thesacontemporaneous with man. 
This principle of contemporaneity with the human 
race seems almost too evident to need argument. It 
fits in with every part of the story and brings all into 
order. The neglect of it by Mr. Gladstone in his 
Nineteenth Century debate with Professor Huxley 
enabled the latter to win an easy victory. 

I cannot help again expressing my regret that Hux- 
ley, or Tyndall, or Dr. Draper, or some other author- 
ity in physical science among those who have called 
this story a myth, has not aided us in forming a true 



PREFATORY. 27 

estimate of its character hy clearly and distinctly 
setting forth, in simple language, his own version of 
the matter, placing each event in its proper order. 

Fortunately, we all have access to the results of the 
labors of those who are eminent in all that pertains 
to our earth's history, and so can make out for our- 
selves what will serve our purpose until they shall 
give us something better. 

As an appropriate prelude to the discussion of the 
Mosaic account, a chart of the world's Achartofthe 
history has been prepared for the benefit ^^'o^i^'^^i^^^^y- 
of those who may not have time or opportunity 
to study up for themselves. 

It divides naturally into two parts. The first in- 
cludes the immeasurable period between the "begin- 
ning " and the time when our earth reached the non- 
luminous condition. In this long interval the solar sys- 
tem was formed. Toward the end of it the sun shone 
as brightly as now, and the earth and other planets re- 
volved around it and on their axes essentially as at 
present. During that period the earth was intensely 
liot, like the sun, and consequently self-luminous. In 
this part of the chart the reader will find set down in 
chronological order certain great facts pertaining to 
what may be styled the embryonic period, when the 
earth w^as in progress from primordial, shapeless nuit- 
ter, to the present rounded, non-luminous planet. 

The remainder of the chart includes the time from 



28 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

the end of the first period to the creation of man. It 
begins with the first day on our planet — not the first 
revolution on its axis, but the first alternation of 
light and darkness, or, as we say, day and night. In 
the earliest part of this immense stretch of time there 
was a long period of which geology knows but little. 
There were boiling waters and dense clouds exclud- 
ing the sun. There was no life, vegetable or animal. 
It was a true azoic age, and forms part of what geol- 
ogists have styled " archsean time." 

In the first column on the left of the chart are the 
Mosaic periods. In the second column are the names 
of geological divisions, themselves divided into four 
great groups called Archaean, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, 
and Cenozoic times. In the third column is set forth 
the gradual emergence of the land from the universal 
ocean to present continents. In the fourth are shown 
the stages of production, or development, of the veg- 
etable kingdom. The fifth column sets forth the 
progress of animal life from the protozoa to man. 
In the sixth is given the climate of the geological 
periods. 

The figures in parentheses refer to pages in Dana^s 
Manual of Geology^ edition of 1880, to which the 
reader will do well to refer. Indeed, I can hardly 
speak too strongly of the importance of his getting 
that work and turning to the references and reading 
up for himself. At the least, if he would get much 



SYNCHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF OUR WORLD'S HIS 



PART I, OR THE EMBRYONIC STAGE. (1 
Of the origin of matter science knows nothing. It can only say, with Genesis i : "In the h 
diffused, and, vintil in motion, wholly in darkness. The earth itself was then unformed a 
motion science is wholly ignorant, and can only attribute it to the same source as matter. ^- 
astronomy, aided hy spectroscopy. After motion came heat and hght; the latter bemg feehl 
trum, three narrow bands. With the impartation of motion the solar system began to f orn 
intense heat. The next step was the change from a vapor to a liquid, and then the hithertc 
probable that the planets were aU formed, and revolving about the sun. Further cooling cau 
light. Henceforth our globe was dependent on the sun for illumination, and then for the fir: 
is to be reckoned the beginning of present conditions. For all that is known from this point 

PART 11. OR TRI 



GEOLOG'L DIVIS'NS. 






Azoic Time. 



Arch^an Time. 



Lower Silurian 
Age. 



Upper Silurian 
Age. 



Devonian Age. 



Carboniferous 
Age. 



LAND AND WATER. 



(1) Water only as separate gases. 

(2) Water as steam or vapor. 



The water deposited, and the land aU 
covered by it. , ^ ^^ 

Later on, a few spots here and there 
began to appear. (160.) 



During this age the land continued to 
emerge, but its extent was small. 



In the Upper Silurian the emergence 
continued, but was still quite limited. 



Land still emerging, butnot very exten- 
sive. At its close in the present United 
States, for example, the New England 
States, Middle, and Western, north of the 
Ohio, with a few spots in other places, 
were all that were above water. (292.) 



VEGE' 



N 



Vegetation here 
kinds, reaching not 
flowerless, seedless 
ureless sea-weeds. 



More species of Sf 
plants. (169.) 



Now were added 
seedless and flower 



To the previous v 
many new species, 
plants whose seeds 
fruit. All were eit 
gymno-sperms. (2H 



The emerging continues ; and by the To all the above 
close of this age, in the United States, Icy cads, trees inter 
besides the above, about as much more nif ers and the yet 
south and west was left bare. (292.) 'was the age of coal 



^W^ " At the close of the Carboniferous Age there was an 



Triassic Period. 



Emergence continues, but was not ex- 
tensive in the United States, including 
east of longitude 30 degrees only a few 
thousand square miles for this period 
and the next combined. The develop- 
ment was much greater in Europe. 



Jurassic Period. 



Cretaceous Period. 



The development in this period, also, 
was much greater in Europe than in 
North America. 



Plants as before 
New kinds of tre 
conifers, mainly c 
No grasses nor mos 



Plants of same t:| 
all plants thus far 
I that is, spore-bear: 
!— that is, gymno-s]| 
fruit-trees to the e 



Large additions to 
hemispheres. 



the 



land in both In addition to t 
naked-seeded plan 
first time palms ar 
bearing fruit whos 
tW" At the close of this periodthere was a destruct 









s' o 
o 



Eocene Period. 



Miocene Period. 



Pliocene Period. 



A considerable 
the dry land. 



increase in extent of 



A further enlargement. 



In this period the dry land was complet- 
ed, having before its close the same coasts, 
mountains, and plains as at present. 



All angiosperms 
become dominant. 



An increase in t 
in the Eocene. 



Angiosperms anc 
jthe dominant veg( 
'era were establish 






Glacial Period. 



Champlain Period. 



Reindeer Period. 



A time of high latitude movements of 
the earth's crust. A very large portion 
was covered with ice. 



Land depressed, especially in high lat- 
itudes. 



Land, in part, elevated above the pres- 
ent. 



Land about as in the Pliocene period. 



Present plants li 
od of ice (Saporta, 
p. 380). 



Plants continue 1 1 



Plants continue It 



Plants continue |; 




seems t^hiwe^ucoi^jj^wx^^^^-^^^ Dana's Manmi df Geology M 



\i 



:RY AS MADE KNOWN BY ASTRONOMY AND GEOLOGY. 

P I includes the whole of the First Mosaic Period.) 

Ix^ning God created the heavens and the earth," At first matter was infinitely attenuated u^^ 
aswid. The first step toward present conditions was the impartation of motion. Of the origin of 
Ads epoch the nebula? part of the world's history begins. Henceforth it comes wit^^^^^ 
Mii Shown bv oresent nebulae. It had in its spectrum, m place of the broad colors of the solar spec- 
%xrI^YJ}^Sl.PJ2^^l:A ^lor^if siftAr T.i«nPt, wP^p formed, each, at first, a mass of vapor, glowing with 



a black opaque crust £-77 n -,„„ „„j „i„K+ 

me was possible that alternation which we caU day and night. 
Jard to man we are indebted to geology. 

U PLANETARY STAGE. 

i 



This was the first day, and from it 



ins in the lowest 
tt(? higher than the 
^cid almost struct- 

7.) 



(if^eeds, but no land 



I first land plants, 
(242.) 



'j.ation were added 

yet there were no 

Lre inclosed in the 

i spore-bearing or 



ANIMALS. 



None. 



Here life began ; there was in this age 
nothing higher than the minute protozo- 
ans. (158.) 



CLIMATE. 



Surface temperature below red heat. 



The climate was hot every- where, even 
to the polesj while the atmosphere was 
poisonous with carbonic acid and other 
injurious gases. 



Besides the above, radiates, moUusks, 
and articulates are now met with. (169.) 



To these are now added the first fishes. 
The y all were cartilaginous. (252.) 
^he kinds of animals were increased 
by many new species of fishes. These 
were so numerous that this is often called 
the Age of Fishes. (2880 First insects 
known. (273.) 



Temperature still slowly falling, but 
climate very warm to the poles. No evi- 
dence of seasons. (288.) 



re now added the To the pre\aous types were now added 
iliate between co- reptiles. (349.) 
.ture palms. '"^^- 

j'i49.) 



Thisl 



Temperature 
(209.) 



tropical every-where. 



Temperature slowly falling, but still 
tropical. (253.) 



Temperature falling, but still warm 
and about the same in all latitudes. 

(352.) 



Irmi nation of life, one of the most universal in geological history." (430.7 



)t of new species. 
)rns, cycads, and 
posed the forests. 
, (408.) 



j as before. Note : 
'6 either seedless— 
T-or naked-seeded 
gas. No grasses or 
9»f this period. 



Fipore-bearing and 
re now seen for the 
[jngiosperms 
jiidf is inside. 



The same types of animals, but in newl There now begin to be indications of 
species, continue. To them were now a difference between temperature of 
added the first mammals. These were high and low latitudes, but still quite 
few in numbers and belonged to thejwarm in the former. No evidence or 
Marsupalia, or Pouched animals. (415.)ilong polar days and nights. 
In this period the first birds are found. 



To this period the first osseous, or bony, I Temperature apparently about the 
fishes appeared. (442.) The most re- same. (452.) No evidence as yet of 
markabfe creatures were great reptiles present inequality between equatorial 



with wings, 
tails. 



and birds with long bony 



Reptiles in greatest abundance and of 

enormous size. Birds with teeth. (466.) 

trees! No marked advance. 

(458.)! 



and polar days. 



Climate warm to latitude 60 degrees 
and upward. (380.) No evidence yet of 
seasons. 



(of species " remarkable for thoroughness and universality.'* (488.) 



i(i palms began to 



same direction as 



^Ims at last became 
3Lon. Present gen- 



All were of new species, although in 
many cases the genera were the same. 
Mammals were numerous, especially her- 
bivorous and carnivorous. Here seem to 
have been the first monkeys. (589.) 



Many new species, but of same general 
character. 



Temperature warm enough for cy- 
presses and magnolias in Spitzbergen. 
(514.) No evidence thus far of present 
polar nights and days. 



Many new species, but no very great 
change. All its mammals are now ex- 
tinct. (Nicholson, Ldfe History, 326.) 



Fall of temperature. (514.) Zones of cli- 
mate ; no evidence of long polar ni ghts. 
A comparatively rapid change of tem- 

Eerature, reaching, at last, great cold in 
igh latitudes. 



through this peri- 
Monde des Plantes, 



phianged. 



tianged. 



hanged. 



General destruction of higher animals. 
Some migrated toward equator. "Of fish- 
es, birds, reptiles, and mammals of the 
Pliocene not one is now extant." (518.) 



The fishes, reptiles, and fowl were of liv- 
ing species ; also the invertebrates. Page 
345 of Nicholson, lAfe History. (543.) 



The fishes, reptiles, and fowl were of liv- 
ing species, also the invertebrates. Page 
345 of Nicholson, I/i/e Histon/. (543.) 



Living mammals, Including many new 
species and man. 



Temperature cold. 
Virginia. 



Ice-cold down to 



Climate milder than now, and longr 
arctic days and nights. 



Climate colder, 
now. 



Days and nights as 



Present climate. From the glaciers 
there is evidence of seasons. 



torv, p. 345, says : " No extinct species of fishes, amphibians, or reptiles are known to occur —that 
)le destruction of life ; but at the end of the Carboniferous, Cretaceous, and Pliocene the destruction 
ippearance in the Champlain period, next after the Glacial period, and a few even much farther back, 
•d edition. As to the actual length of the Mosaic periods, the first three were longer than the others. 



PREFATORY, 29 

good from these pages, he must familiarize himself 
with the names of the geological divisions mentioned, 
and, above all, fix clearly in his mind the place of the 
cretaceous, the three divisions of the tertiary — the 
eocene, miocene, and pliocene — and the quaternary, 
including the glacial epoch, the Champlain, and the 
recent. 



80 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 



THE PROFESSOR. 



Before entering upon the discussion recorded in 
tliese pages it will be in order to say a few words 
about the one who takes the role of opposer, and who 
is called the Professor. 

Before our acquaintance he spent a part of the 
summer at the house of an old classmate of mine, who 
described him as follows. Afterward I found the 
description sufficiently accurate. 

'* The Professor," said my friend, " has little faith 
in any thing but physical phenomena and tlie laws 
deduced from them. He does not believe either in 
miracles or revelation. He considers them impossi- 
bilities, or, as he would sometimes say, ' things inca- 
pable of proof, and, therefore, a waste of power on the 
part of the Almighty, even if they did really occur.' 
His ability to conceive, he says, marks the limits of 
his belief ; consequently he denies the existence of 
a personal God. 

" He is an admirer of Mr. Spencer, and of others of 
the same way of thinking. In his opinion tliey are 
the great lights that are to enlighten the world. He 



THE PROFESSOR. 31 

gives to their philosophy the faith which he refuses 
to the Bible. With Buckle, he believes that, upon 
the whole, religion has been an obstacle in the way of 
human progress. He is fond of saying that there has 
always been a conflict between religion and science, 
and that religion has always been in the wrong. When 
doubt as to this is expressed, he at once cites the 
Mosaic account of creation, and declares as a matter 
not to be questioned by any one whose opinion is en- 
titled to respect that it is irreconcilable with, and, in- 
deed, flatly contradicted by, the superior knowledge 
of the present day." 

Some weeks after this letter was received the Pro- 
fessor came into our neighborhood, and it was not long 
before we met. As our studies and tastes were simi- 
lar we had no lack of topics of mutual interest, and 
we spent many pleasant hours in discussing them. 
For some time I saw little to indicate the aggressive 
belief of which my friend had written me ; but one 
evening, as we were sitting in my library conversing 
about the wonderful progress which geology and 
astronomy, and, indeed, all departments of physical 
science, had made during the last half century, he be- 
gan to speak about tlie need of more completely 
throwing off the shackles of old superstitions, and of 
the debt which mankind owed to science for its assist- 
ance in this great work, and especially for having so 
clearly proved the falsity of tlie fable called tlie 



82 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

Mosaic account of creation, adding, " False in one, 
false in all." 

There was in his manner something of that offen- 
sive air of superior wisdom which Buckle, Spencer, 
Huxley, and others so often assume toward those who 
believe in the Bible. It touched me for a moment, 
until I reflected that it belonged not to the man but 
to his school. I had my doubts, too, whether he 
knew so much about that chapter as his positive way 
of speaking seemed to indicate. So I smothered a 
little natural feeling and asked if he had ever read it. 
He replied, " Every body knows what Moses says ; 
but I do not depend upon my own reading in this 
matter as much as upon the account given of it by 
those who profess to be its special friends and ex- 
pounders. Their theories and explanations I have 
read, and to some extent, studied. They have given 
it so much thought and labor that I am sure they have 
made it as plausible and as consistent with nature as 
possible. But I find what they say so contrary to 
what I know to be true — their explanations so absurd, 
and the whole matter so false — that, as a scientific 
man, I cannot beh'eve the story itself, nor the book 
wliich pretends to authenticate the story. Its claim 
to be from an all-wise and truth-loving God is simply 
absurd." 

To this I answered that I was as unable as himself 
to accept a falsehood as a revelation from God, but 



THE PROFESSOR. 88 

tliat for my own part I did not look upon this chapter 
as a falsehood ; that this question of truthfulness was 
one of great importance ; that although at first it 
might appear fair and even generous to accept as its 
true meaning the theories and explanations of its 
friends, yet such a course might lead to erroneous re- 
sults, since they were not authorized to speak for 
Moses, and it was quite possible that they were so 
limited in their knowledge, or so filled with false 
science, that however good their intentions they could 
not comprehend the truth, no matter how clearly it 
was stated. If it should turn out that they have at- 
tributed to Moses any thing not belonging to him, 
common justice requires that he should not be held 
responsible. And, furthermore, since the Hebrew is 
the only authority, if there is apparent error the nar- 
rative is not to be condemned on that account unless, 
on a fair examination, it shall appear that the transla- 
tion correctly represents the original. I, for one, did 
not believe in any conflict between Genesis and truth, 
however it misrht be as to "science." Indeed, as 
" science " has always been very incomplete, and more 
or less mixed with error, it was to me no small pre- 
sumptive evidence of the divine origin of the Mosaic 
cosmogony that no one had been able to make it 
square with past "science." 

It is only within the life of the present generation, 
I added, that science has reached a position sufti- 



84 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

ciently advanced to enable ns to see the agreement be- 
tween the story and the actual history of our world. 
In short, the science of to-day has barely attained 
some of those heights of knowledge which, for thou- 
sands of years, have been held by this account. 

My words, I knew, sounded to him extravagant, 
but I spoke with a full sense of their meaning, and, 
if he was willing, I would gladly go with him through 
this chapter and compare its statements with facts as 
they have been made known by astronomers, geolo- 
gists, and others. 

The Professor shook his head incredulously, but 
after a little consented to make the experiment. 

I suggested that it would be well to lay down cer- 
tain rules for our guidance, that our conversation 
The limits of i^ight not be led off into collateral mat- 
rdf™so; ^^^^- He probably had his opinion as to 
exegesis which whether Moses wrote this account. I 

we agreed to 

adopt. saw no good reason for reversing the 

voice of antiquity ; but this was not the question we 
proposed to consider, as it had no bearing on the 
truth of the story itself. Therefore we would not 
discuss the authorship, but start with the seli- 
evident fact that the account exists now, and has 
existed for several thousand years. For conven- 
ience, but not as adopting any theory, we might 
speak of it as the Mosaic account and of Moses as 
the author. 



THE PROFESSOR. 85 

As rules to govern us in our investigation I thought 
the following no more than fair : 

Words are to be taken in their usual sense, and the 
story allowed to mean just what it says. 

It is not to be held responsible for what any one 
has inferred that Moses intended to teach. 

Last, but not least, silence is not denial. 

To all this the Professor readily agreed. 

I then added that for the present, at least, our dis- 
cussion should not include any other part of the Bible, 
for certainly the difficulties, or errors, as he might es- 
teem them, which Colenso and others think they have 
discovered elsewhere have no bearing upon the first 
chapter of Genesis. 

At first he demurred, saying that these things had 
weight with him if not with me, and he thought we 
were in no condition to pronounce an opinion upon 
the Bible if we left all the rest out. 

I reminded him that our object now was not t<> 
decide upon the truth of the Bible, but only of the 
•first chapter. This was written long before the 
rest of the book, and was true or false independently 
of it. Our only business at present was to deter- 
mine whether it was veritable history or a myth. 
Afterward, if he chose, other matters could be con- 
sidered. Moreover, I proposed, if he were willing, 
to confine the discussion to the first twenty -seven 
verses of the chapter. I desired this limitation be- 



36 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

cause it was impossible for tradition to give Moses 
any account of things which occurred before man 
appeared, and these verses were concerned wholly 
with such events. 

Some who have discussed this story, and arrived at 
conclusions unfavorable to its truthfulness, have based 
their results upon what seemed to them contradic- 
tions between the first and second chapters. Others 
claim that it was taken from the Chaldeans. Both 
these questions, however important in themselves, are 
of no consequence so far as the line of investigation 
whicli I proposed to follow is concerned. The first 
chapter of Genesis is true or false, without reference 
to the second; and if I admit (which I do not) that 
somebody got tlie story from the Chaldeans and 
foisted it into the Bible, wliatever other effect such 
an admission may have it lias none upon our ques- 
tion. The statements here are true or false, no mat- 
ter where they came from. 

The Professor had no objection to these limitations. 
Certainly the statements in the first chapter are true 
or false whether they are contradicted by those in the 
second or not, or whether they came from the Chal- 
deans. He was willing to go into the matter as thor- 
oughly as possible, although, to be frank, he thought 
it rather a waste of time. 

I then called his attention to Dr. Draper's views as 
to what a revelation should do, and read the following 



THE PROFESSOR 87 

from his Intellectual Development of Europe^ and 
asked what he thought of it : 

" Considering the asserted origin of this book,"^ in- 
directly from God himself, we might justly expect 
wbat a reveia- ^^^^^ ^^ would bear to be tried by any 
tion would do. gtandard that man can apply, and vindi- 
cate its truth and excellence in the ordeal of human 
criticism. ... As years pass on and human science 
becomes more exact, more comprehensive, its con- 
clusions nmst be found in unison therewith. When 
occasion arises it should furnish us at least the fore- 
shadowing of the great truths discovered by astron- 
omy and geology, not offering for them tlie wild 
fictions of earlier ages, the inventions of the infancy 
of man." 

The Professor thought this a severe test, but he 
saw no reason why he should object. It seemed to 
him incredible that God, the Creator, the embodiment 
of all knowledge, should, if he spoke at all of the 
creation, do otherwise than state facts, nor could he 
conceive of any end to be gained by giving them in 
any other than their true order. It would seem most 
natural to relate things one after another just as 
they occurred, and the true order would present no 
greater difficulty to the minds of the Hebrews than 

* Dr. Draper is speaking of the Koran, bnt liis words are better 
than he knew, and I adopt them as a fair test of the Mosaic story of 
creation. 



38 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

any other. Such a series of statements would neces- 
sarily foreshadow discoveries which the future was 
to make, and which, it is highly probable, are not all 
made yet. The lack of such foreshadowing would, 
as Dr. Draper intimates, be indicative of another 
origin — one that was not divine. 

As this accorded with my own views I made no 
reply. 

We then agreed to meet the next evening in my 
library, and so it was our discussion began. 



OUR FIRST EVENING, 89 



OUR FIRST EVENING. 



T H E T H E M E . 

Genesis i, 1-5.* 

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 

2 And the earth was without form^ and void ; 
And darkness was upon the face of the deep. 

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 

4 And God saw the light, that it was good : 
And God divided the light from the darkness. 

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. 
And the evening and the maiming were the first day. 

The Professor was promptly on hand. I had pre- 
pared for the occasion by laying on my table certain 
books which I thought would be needed. Among 
them, and most important, were a Hebrew Bible, 
Lexicon, and Concordance ; a copy of the Septuagint 
and our Enghsh Bible ; Dana's Manual of Geology^ 
and Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy^ and quite a 
number of other books on geology, spectroscopy, etc. 
As he took his seat he glanced over the table and 
said, '' This looks like business ; but 1 dp not see any 
commentaries on the Bible."f 

* The Common Version, except as to divisions into paragraphs. 
In the course of these discussions will be found such criticisnis on 
the common rendering as I may have to offer. 

f I had examined a number of commentaries, but found little in them 
for our present purpose, and, therefore, did not lay them on my table. 



40 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

I replied tliat perhaps tliey were more essential to his 
arguments than to mine ; that all that I was concerned 
with was the words of Moses himself, and those I pro- 
posed to take in their simplest and most literal meaning. 
Others had told ns what Moses meant to say ; my pur- 
pose was to let him tell his own story in his own way. 

The Professor thought that seemed fair enough. 

I then took up the Bible and read : " In the begin- 
ning God created the heaven and the earth," and 
asked whether that were true. 

He replied, '' Undoubtedly there was a beginning 
of the present order of thing's,'^ and the 

A beginning. ^ ^ 

universe must have originated in an Ulti- 
mate Cause — that is, in the will of God. Many per- 
sons, however, do not believe in a personal God. 
They would say, ' In the beginning the ultimate 

* " All modern science seems to point to the finite duration of our 
system in its present form." — Professor Newcomb, Popular Astron- 
omy^ p. 489. 

Professor Tait, in his Recent Advances in Physical Science^ p. 22, 
says : " It (the principle of the Dissipation of Energy) enables us dis- 
tinctly to say that the present order of things has not been evolved 
through infinite past time by the agency of laws now at work, but 
must have had a distinctive beginning, a state beyond which w^e are 
totally unable to penetrate ; a state, in fact, which must have been 
prodnced by other than the now visibly acting causes." 

And again, on page 26, "All portions of science, and especially 
that beautiful one, the Dissipation of Energj^, point unanimously to a 
beginning." 

The philosophy which, to avoid this conchision, talks about a 
straighc line returning upon itself, and of space which has fonr or 
more dimensions, is worthy of those agnostic scientists who talk of 
worlds where two and two mnv make five. 



UR FIRST E YENING, 41 

cause produced the heavens hud the earth.' They 
would object to this expression, ' The will of God.' " ^ 
I replied that for my part I had no objection to 
liis styling the Author of all things the Ultimate 
Cause, or the First Cause. I was a believer- in a per- 
sonal God, but whether on good gi'ounds or not was 
outside of our discussion, since that question had no 
bearing upon the truth or falsehood of the physical 
statements in these twenty-seven verses. They com- 
mence their account at the ''beginning," and you 
adnut that there was a beffinninp; ; our 

^^ ^° ^ The earth's 

next business, therefore, is to inquire what primordial con- 

1 T . p , T 1 dition. 

was the condition oi the earth at the ear- 
liest period at which philosophy takes cognizance of it. 

Laying his hand upon the astronomy lying before 
him, and turning over its leaves, he answered, " La- 
place improved and gave anew to the world the theory 
which commonly goes by his name, and, as far as I 
can see, it gives a true description of our world's 
original condition.f 

'^ According to that great astronomer and mathe- 
matician the solar system existed at that time only as 
a mass of infinitely attenuated matter, something like 
gas or vapor. The earth then was an integral part 
of that immense nebulous body, and consequently had 

* Some say, an unconscious intelligence (!) produced all tilings. 

f " Original," so far as philosophy can tell us. It is the point at 
which tlie mind stops when tracing back the chain of causes and 
leaps to the infinite. 



42 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

no more form or shape than has, for example, a ton 
of wiitei* in the clouds which darken the sky before 
a rain. The clouds have shape and form, however 
irregular, but any one ton among the thousands 
which they contain has none. 

'' It is easy," he continued, " to see in this the supe- 
riority of science over Genesis, for, according to all 
the commentators who have not been shamed out of 
it by scientists, Moses says the world was called at 
once into being, a vast, solid globe, incomparably 
laro^er than the sun and stars. Here is one of tliose 
contradictions — an important one, too — which compel 
scientists to refuse to believe this story. 

" In fact, here are three errors. He says, or at least 
Three errors in hnplies, that the world was called suddenly 
Genesis. j^^^^ existence. This is an error, for the 

world was millions of years in making. He regards 
it as solid from the start. We know that it was once 
gaseous, then molten, and not solid till long after. 
His tliird error is as to size. The earrh is not larger 
than the sun and the stars." 

Stop a moment, I replied. Where does Moses say 
" the world was called at once into existence a solid 
globe ? " Where, too, does he say that *' it is larger 
than the sun and stars ? " I handed him the Bible ; 
lie ran his eye up and down the page, and then said : 
" I do not see it in so many words, but certainly 
it must be implied, and Moses himself nmst have 



UR FIRST E VENING. 43 

thought so, or else so many commentators would not 
have given out that idea to the v^orld." 

I reminded him that Moses was responsible only 
for his own words, and certainly his account should 
not be pronounced false for what is not in it. 

I added that I, too, believed that our earth was 
once a gas and then molten. It was worth noting 
that it would not be easy even now, with all our 
knowledge and with the help of a copious scientific 
terminology, to describe the earth's condition while, 
yet an unsegregated part of a vast nebulous mass, in 
more fitting terms than those which Moses has used, 
and winch are rendered in our version " without form 
and void." These words are tohu and 

. . Meaning of 

oohu, Tohu occurs twenty times m the "tohu "and 
Bible. It is rendered vanity in the phrase, 
"less than nothing and vanity ;^'' and in '4ie maketh 
the judges of the earth as vanity '^ " and, " they that 
make a graven image are all of them vanity * " and, 
" they trust in vanity P " Ye go after vain things." 
''I have spent my strength for nauglit^"^ etc. Wliat 
more accurately descriptive word can be found for 
matter ten thousand times less dense than air % 

Bohu occurs but three times, and is rendered in 
each place by void^ or its equivalent, emptiness. 

It is perhaps not easy to gather into one word the 
meaning that runs through and connects all the 
meanings of tohu / in connection with hohu it is 



44 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

exquisitely applicable to tlie infinitely attenuated,*^ 
nebulous matter, impalpable, invisible, amorphous, 
void even of cosmic organization, the unshaped raw 
material of future sun and planets. Whether we 
tlius derive a version for ourselves, or whether we 
accept the less literal English, ^' without form and 
void," matters little for my argument ; but where 
would Laplace's nebular hypothesis, and the cosmic 
The denial of theories of our agnostic friends based 

the once "tohu, ,^ ^ i j xi \ 'Ji 

bohu" condi- tlicreon — wliere would these be it our 
tion fatal to the ^j^j-th never was in the condition described 

nebular hy- 
pothesis, by these words ? Would not the suc- 
cessful denial of that one clause annihilate them all? 
The Professor hesitated a moment, and then 
frankly said: ''Every believer in any form of the 
nebular hypothesis must admit that this clause, 
somehow, does describe a condition which once ex- 
isted. If Moses really meant what his words now 
seem to say, that sentence is true. But he meant no 
such thing, and had no idea that such a 
meaning would be attached to them. He 
thought that some six thousand years ago or so 

* If the matter now in the solar system formed at that time a sphere 
extending? only to Neptune it must liave been four hundred million 
times rarer than air at the earth's surface now — about as near nothing 
as the human mind can conceive ! 

It must be remembered that the essence of the nebular hypothesis 
is that the earth and all the solar system were in a gaseous condition. 
As to how they got into the present arrangement opinions differ. 
It is only the once gaseous state that we are here concerned with. 



OUR FIRST EVENING. 45 

the earth was in a condition fitly described by tohn 
and hohu. We know it was not in such a condition 
six thousand years ago, nor ever, except millions of 
years ago, while it was part of a nebulous mass — 
something of which he had not the slightest knowl- 
edge, and therefore he could not have referred to it. 
Hence he really erred, although his words chance to 
describe a condition that did once exist." 

To this I repHed : We need not argue about that. 
I am willing to admit that Moses, like many others 
of the prophets, did not fully comprehend the mean- 
ing of his utterances ; ^ very probably he had many 
erroneous notions. This is not at all the question 
which we are considering. Here, in this chapter, are 
certain physical statements, however they came ; and, 
w^hatever Moses or the Hebrews may have thought 
about them, I propose to inquire whether they hap- 
pen, if you prefer that word, to describe real condi- 
tions or transactions, and let other matters take care 
of tliemselves. 

The Professor admitted the justice of this, but said 
he had been so accustomed to the other view that 
he found it difficult to rid himself of it. 

I suggested that hereafter he should say of a state- 
ment that it was true or false, and not qualify his 
words with conjectures as to whether Moses meant 
what he said. 

* 1 Pet. i, 10. 



46 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

To this he assented.^ After a moment's pause, he 
added : " Are you not assuming: that the 

Objections. It _ '^ ^ ^ 

says the world Condition spoken of as ' without form and 

was made only .^.t . 

six days before void was aimost innnitely remote, instead 
of being, as the account in my opinion 
clearly intimates, only six common days before 
Adam? and this, too, contrary to the voice of all 
antiquity ? Is not this tampering with the account ? " 

I replied that I assumed nothing as to the time, but 
had simply asked whether the words " without form 
and void" did not correctly describe the nebulous 
condition; and wliether, if the earth never was with- 
out form and void, it could ever have been part of a 
nebulous mass. 

If he closely examined the account he would see 
it was he that put into it an unauthorized statement 
when he said that Moses teaches that the formless 
and void condition preceded the creation of Adam 
only six days. It is true that Moses speaks of six 
days, but he does not say (1) that this condition im- 
mediately preceded the first day, nor (2) that the 
days followed each other in immediate succession, nor 
(3) that they were common days. Whether these 

* Although the Professor agreed not to make use of that objection- 
able expression, yet, as the reader wiU see as the conversation con- 
tinues, he was unable to keep his promise. In truth, the assertion 
that Moses does not mean what he says lies at the bottom of so many 
explanations on the one side, and so many objections on the other, 
that taking it away destroys almost the whole of them. 



OUR FIRST EVENING. 47 

propositions are true the account does not say. Tliey 
are open questions, to be determined from the study 
of all the facts involved. 

The Professor made no reply except tliat this was 
a new way to study Genesis, although he must admit 
it was common enough in every branch of science. 
In short, it was letting theories wait upon facts, and 
to that, as a scientific man, he had no objection. 

I continued : The account thus far being admitted 
to describe actual conditions, we wall pass to the next 
sentence. Moses says, ^^And darkness was upon the 
face of the deep," ^ and not till after that does lie 
speak of the imparting of motion. Tell me if this order 
be not scientifically correct — darkness before niotion. 

* The deep : tehohm. This word carries with it a sense of profound 
depth and mystery. It is apphed to the sea, but with reference to 
its depth rather th;m its nature as water. Tlie sense of mystery is 
always an element more or less prominent. Job xxviii, 14: "The 
deep (depth) saith, It is not in me ; and the sea saith, It is not in me." 
Here it is not the sea, but is contrasted with the sea. " Ye dragons, 
and all deeps " {depths), Psa. cxlviii, Y ; and again in Deut. xxxiii, 
13: "Blessed of the Lord be his land, for the precious things of 
heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath." "The 
Ahriight}^ shall bless with the blessings of heaven above, blessings 
of the deep that lieth under" (Gen. xlix, 25). It is a strange and 
mysterious depth, whether ofthecru'th or of the sea. The Septna<rint 
sought to express this double meaning by "abyss," and to some extent 
it is found in our word " the deep." If applicable to the ocean, liow 
much more to such a deep as that nebulous matter j^et inert ud dark, 
a deep whose profundity tlie mind is powerless to measure, although 
we mny express it in figures? Its depth, as astronomy tells us, was 
j?reater, by some unknown amount, than the radius of Neptune's orbit. 
It was more than twenty-eight hundred millions of miles. 
4 



48 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

" Certainly," he replied ; " light is well known to 
be a mode, or perhaps more properly a result, of mo- 
tion, and before motion there could have been no 
light whatever, but only darkness. I have been 
Objection 6. told, liowever, that the darkness of which 
il ^r^sub! Moses wrote was something quite differ- 
stance." ^nt, not a mere absence of light, but itself 

a positive entity ; that certainly is absurd." "^ 

I agreed that such a statement would be absurd, but 
as Moses did not make it, and was in no degree responsi- 
ble for what people said about him, I did not see the 
relevance of the remark. He put upon record what 
he had to say, and it w^as unjust to charge him with 
error because pseudo-scientists, many centuries after 
his death, tacked these falsehoods to his words. Here, 
then, I added, is one verse which does somehow 
" chance " (?) to describe conditions which once really 
existed, and to place them in their true order. 

* Lange talks about '' Latent lights material darkness." See his 
Commentary on Genesis, p. 188. 

It may be thought useless to refer to the absurd things which ex- 
positors have said in the name of what tliey call " Science." But it 
is these that have made tlie creative story an offense to all who have 
even a smattering of true science, and have driven away multitudes 
of thinking men, or compelled them, with Mr. Roreson, to believe 
that God inspired Moses to write what seems a history of the crea- 
tion, but which was never intended to be such, but is only a hymn 
setting forth in poetical language G-od's creatorship. 

Those who would see what absurdities — stones in place of bread — 
are offered the biblical student, will find an astonishing illustration in 
Lange's Genesis, pp. 188, 189, and beyond. No quotation can do 
justice to the "science" there displayed! 



OUR FIRST EVENING, 49 

He replied : '' If wliat Moses says is to be taken 
literally I cannot object ; but, then, nobody thinks of 
his meaning exactly what he says. Undoubtedly this 
verse is a poetical description of something in his 
imagination, and it merely happens to describe condi- 
tions which really existed." 

Well, Professor, I said, if these prove to be the 
only coincidences possibly your explanation may be 
right. We will see. At present we will go on with 
the account. How do you account for motion? 

'^ I cannot account for it," he answered. "I can 
only attribute it to the First Cause that, as Moses 
says, created the heaven and the earth ; and as I see 
he does the same I am content to admit he is 
right." * 

" But Moses says this ' moving' was upon the face 
of the waters. There were no waters when obiection 7 
the earth was in a nebulous condition, con- ^^ waters 

when the earth 

sequently he could not have referred to was in nebu- 
that state, and if so your explanation fails." 

I have more than once, I replied, found what 

* It is curious to note that the particular kind of motion with which 
science specially occupies itself, and to which are attributed most 
of the processes of nature, is specifically described by the word here 
used to denote the divine act. It is a throbbinp:, pulsative motion ; 
or, in more scientific phrase, an undulating movement. It is used 
elsewhere but twice : '* All my bones shake " (Jer. xxiii, 9) ; '' As 
an eagle fluttereth over her young" (Deut. xxxii, 11). Dr. Tayler 
Lewis says that the verb, being here in the Piel,^ only intensifies this 
idea. 



50 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

seemed to me an error ; but the apparent contradic- 
tion disappeared when I turned from what people say 
Moses said to his own w^ords, and took them in their 
most radical, and consequently tlieir most ancient, 
meaning. The Hebrew possesses a descriptive power 
which modern languages have lost, or, perhaps it 
would be better to say, never had. In the infancy of 
the race things were named from some real or appar- 
ent quality. This mode of naming is still found in 
chemistry and in other departments of science; but 
instead of taking w^ords from our own tongue we bor- 
row" from Greece and Rome. Thus we have oxygen, 
the acid-maker ; hydrogen, the water-maker ; fluid, 
that which flows^ the opposite of solid. This last 
term, fluid, we apply indifferently to water, air, the 
ether, and to all non-solids. Now, you know, or can 
Meaning? of ©asily Icam from the lexicon, that this 
mahyim, word rendered waters, mahyim^ is the ex- 
act equivalent of our word fluid.^ for it also comes 
from a root signifying, according to Gesenius, ' to be 
fluid, to flow.' * 

Rendering the Hebrew, then, with the strictest 
possible adherence to its radical sense, we have : 
" And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of" 
something (whatever it was) which could flow, and 
was w.obile^ non-solid, 

* Mahyim is applied to at least three other fluid substances. See 
this word in Gesenius, Lexicon. 



OUR FIRST EVENING. 51 

" But," interrupted the Professor, " why did not 
Moses use some other word to indicate tlie highly dif- 
fused, attenuated, fluid condition of the primordial 
matter instead of one so likely to mislead as mah- 
yim f " 

Because there is no other word in the Hebrew 
that so well describes — or describes at all Hebrews had 
— a gaseous body at rest. It must be re- ^^^ ^r^for a^r 
membered that the important obvious ^^^^s*- 
characteristics of tlie primordial matter, before mo- 
tion had been imparted, were its fluid, ether-like con- 
dition and the absence of motion. The Hebrews had 
no word for air or gas. The nearest approach to it 
was Tualiy but that is, through and through, a noun 
of motion. It is wind or breatli, but never air at rest. 

I added that there is a. great difference between tlie 
appositeness of tlie Hebrew mahyim and our modern 
word " nebulous," as applied to such matter, very 
much to the advantage of the former. Ours is the 
word of a child who looks no deeper than the sur- 
face, and, because he sees something w^hich looks like 
a bit of fog or mist in the sky, calls it a nebula, 
which Webster defines to be a Latin word " signify- 
ing mist, vapor, a cloud." Mahyim is a name which 
one would give who knew thoroughly the nature of 
that of which he spoke, and hence was able to select 
a w^ord denoting a most important — perhaps its most 
important — characteristic. In fitness of nomencla- 



52 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

ture, in tins instance at least, modern science lags far 
behind the anthor of this story. 

I then called his attention to the manner in which 
Moses describes the primordial condition. It is im- 
palpable, witliout form, as it were nothingness ; that is 
tohu. It contains nothing, is void of land and sea, of 
plants and animals ; that is hohu. It is enveloped in 
darkness — darkness covers it. It is the profound, 
awe-inspiring, mysterious deep ; that is tehohm. It is 
at rest, but not a solid, it is mobile, a fluid ; that is 
Tnahytm, on whicli the Ruah Elohim — the Spirit of 
God — was about to move. I asked if, with all the 
wealth of our English tongue and its unlimited right 
to draw upon the languages of Greece and Rome, he 
could do better. 

To this the Professor made no reply, but, evading 
*'on the face "^J question. Said : ^' Moses says ' upon the 
of the waters. ^^^^ ^^ ^j^^ waters,' or, to usc the meaning 

nearest to its radical signification, ' upon the face of 
the fluid mass.' JN'ow, ' on the face ' cannot, so far 
as I can see, mean any thing else than ' upon the 
outer surface.' How do you explain that ? " ^ 

* The Professor being a firm believer in the nebular hypothesis, we 
did not speak of certain matters which will suggest themselves to 
the reader. Scientific men are not agreed as to the mode in which 
our system was produced from the gas-like matter. Some think that 
the rotary motion began at the center ; others that it arose from the 
center-ward movement of the atoms, and that the planets were not 
tlirown off, but were left behind in the form of rings as the inner parts 
siirank toward the grand center; others, again, say that while in 



OUR FIRST EVENING. 53 

I am not able to explain the mystery of the be- 
ginning of force and motion. All that I dare at- 
tempt is to take the facts of our world's history as 
science has made them known, and compare them 
with what I find here in the story itself. This I may 
do without irreverence or presumption. Perhaps, 
however, the little that is known may cast some light 
even on that phrase. If we go back into the past 
to .the period preceding the segregation of the nebulae 
we find matter infinitely diffused, and in a state of 
rest or equilibrium. That there was a time antece- 
dent to existing motions is evident, because these all 
tend to use up the present store of force, or at least 
to turn it into heat, and to transfer that to the ether. 
A loss, however small, going on from all eternity 
would have exhausted the vis viva of the universe 
countless ages ago. It is difficult to conceive of mat- 
ter at rest except it be uniformly diffused through 
space. Then the mutual attractions would neutralize 
each other. 

Or it may be that, at first, matter existed without 
attraction between its atoms, and then it would have 

one of these ways, or in some way not yet thought of, the planets 
were formed from diffused nebulous matter at some inconceivably re- 
mote period, they were afterward largely added to by accretions of 
meteoric matter. All, however, are agreed that our globe was once 
molten, and they are almost, if not quite, as unanimous that it wjis 
once in a gaseous condition. Whicliever of these theories is true, 
its central fact, tiie gas-like state of the earth, is well described by 
the language of Moses. 



54 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

no tendency to move. The ether seems now to be in 
that condition. It possesses elasticity and inertia, 
but not gravitation. Such a condition of equilibrium 
or rest would never come to an end of itself, much 
less generate a solar system. There was needed some 
external disturbing force to give the first impulse. 
Of this science gives no explanation, but is forced to 
be content to refer it to the first cause. Moses does 
the same. It was, lie says, the Spirit of God that 
moved upon the face of the fiuid substance — that is, 
from without. It may be, too, that the phrase refers 
to that remote fact not yet clearly seen, but which is 
indicated by science, namely, "the addition of the 
forces to the substratum of matter which has resulted 
in the present multiplicity of elements." ^ Beyond, 
I dare not venture a conjecture. There I leave it. 

To this the Professor made no reply. We sat a 
few moments in silence. I do not know what was 
passing in his mind. As for myself, I was revolving 
the question, How does spirit act upon matter? and 
then this unthinkable fact of existence, not that of 
God only, but my own and that of the universe. It 
was a temptation to wander off into such fields of 
speculation, but, remembering the limits within which 
we had agreed to keep, I put it aside for a more con- 
venient season. 

The Professor spoke : " But are you not becom- 

* See Professor Cook's New Chemistry. 



OUR FIRST EVENING, 55 

ing like the Talmudists, who find occult meanings in 
every word, and mysteries in the chance 

•^ / "^ Objection 8. 

irregularities of the letters?" 

There is the greatest difference, I replied. The 
Talmudists got away from the meaning as given by 
the grammar and lexicon ; I am seeking to get as 
close to it as possible. They sought for mysteries in 
their inner consciousness. I am seeking for no mys- 
teries, but to see if there are facts in the world's 
actual history which correspond to the statements of 
Moses. It seems to me that this is as unlike the 
method of tlie Talmudists as possible. 

It will be wise for us to inquire in regard to what 
has already been said, or what shall hereafter be said, 
not whether it is new — that is a matter of little conse- 
quence ; nor whether it is of importance, for of that 
we often cannot judge ; but whether it is true, leaving 
other matters to be determined afterward. 

But to return to our theme. What, according to 
present science, must have been the first visible effect 
of motion in that primordial matter ? 

" The emission of light. First, heat was generated, 
and as soon as that became sufficiently intense the 
whole became luminous. The discovery that forces 
are so related that motion generates heat and light is 
the glory of modern science. It is a part of that 
correlation of forces of which we have heard so much, 
and the true order of development is darkness. 



56 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

motion, light — a discovery wholly due to the nine- 
teenth century." 

To this I agreed, and then called his attention to 
the order given in the second and third verses of this 
chapter, asking at the same time whether it was 
correct. 

Of course he could not deny it, but, evidently fear- 
ing the conclusion which would be drawn from his 
Objection 9. admission, he said, "But surely the coin- 
The comci- cidcuce is merely accidental. Moses knew 

dence acci- *j 

dental. nothing about modern physics ; then how 

could he have any knowledge of the relations of forces 
— relations discovered almost four thousand years 
after his death ? Such a supposition was too absurd 
to be entertained." 

I thought the coincidences were getting to be 
rather numerous, and therefore asked how many, ac- 
cording to the doctrine of chances, would be needed 
to prove tliem intentional. 

He acknowledged the difficulty of accounting for 
many coincidences by any theory of accidents, but he 
was not prepared to say how far he would go rather 
tlian admit the possession of so much knowledge on 
the part of the author of this account. 

From my stand-point, 1 answered, there is no diffi- 
culty in accounting for the possession of so much 
knowledge, nor any anachronism in imputing to the 
author of this narrative absolute familiarity with all 



OUR FIRST EVENING. 57 

that scientists ever have, or ever will, discover ; but 
from yours the difficulty is insurmountable. 

To this the Professor made no reply, and as I did 
not care then to pursue that thought any further we 
let it drop. 

After a little he said : " It seems to me that Moses 
makes a statement in the fourth verse which is contra- 
dicted by our present knowledge — a very natural 
error on his part, because when he lived nothing was 
known of the nature of light. Directly after the 
words, ' And there was light,' he says that the ' light 
was good.' Now, the Creator could not objection lo. 
have indited this account, for he knew nouncedgood 
then, what scientists have just found out, too soon, 
that the early nebular light was not good light. It 
was very poor light indeed. Unfortunately for the 
truth of his story, the spectroscope, of which Moses 
knew nothing, has revealed the remarkable and hith- 
erto unsuspected fact that the spectra of gaseous neb- 
ulae are very poor in color and intensity. They show 
only three faint and very narrow bands of light, one 
in the blue and two in the green. Such light is good 
in no sense that I can understand. It certainly seems 
to me that this is an error which the All-wise could 
not have committed, and hence I cannot think of his 
being the author of this story." 

You admit that light did appear in the nebulous 
matter, and after motion ? 



58 . GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

" Yes ; there can be no doubt about that." 

And, I added, ahhoiigh it was not perfected at 
first, 3^et that afterward it attained its present richness 
of color and actinic power? 

"Yes; I must of course admit it." 

Well, then, I asked, where is Moses in error ? 

" Why, in this : he says the light attained this con- 
dition of goodness immediately after it began to exist 
Science disputes that, for, in fact, light did not attain 
its present quality until many thousands of years 
later." 

Pray, show me where Moses says so. 

" It is true," lie replied, '* Moses does not say this 
in so many words, but he does place the one state- 
ment imm^ediately after the other. He says, ' And 
tliere was light,' and at once goes on to say, in the 
very next clause, ' And God saw the light, that it was 
good ; ' and every body but you thinks he meant that 
the one followed immediately after the other." 

Truth cannot be decided by counting its advocates. 
Error is almost always in the majority. Our business is 
with what Moses says and with the facts of the world's 
history, and with nothing besides. In his account 
I find the tw^o statements with no intimation whether 
much or little time intervened, or even none at all. 
But no man has a right on the strength of this silence 
to charge Moses with saying that there was no in- 
terval; and then, because tliere really was an interval. 



OUR FIRST EVENING. 59 

to accuse him of falsehood. This, it seems to me, is 
going beyond all fairness; and if so, yom* objection 
falls to the ground. 

There is, however, something here to whicli I wish 
to direct your attention. A few years ago ^^ .^^^rt^^, 
it would have been thought the proper matter of order, 
order to place the verdict ' good ' after the statement 
that God divided between the light and the darkness. 
People believed till lately that light and darkness, at 
first, were mingled as two substances, for example, 
alcohol and water ; and that God, in some way, sepa- 
rated them. If so, then evidently, until that was 
done, light could scarcely be called good light ; or in 
other words, the verdict should not have been given 
until after the separation. Up to the present cent- 
ury — I might almost say, up to tlie present decade — 
such would have seemed the scientific as well as the 
natural order. But, in fact, to have placed the ver- 
dict after that division w^ould have been a real and 
important error, for we know that light and darkness 
are not two substances, and the division between them 
was not an unmingling, but a separation by an opaque 
body, just such a separation as now exists. This, of 
course, could not take place until the surface of the 
earth became covered with a dark crust. No other 
division between light and darkness is possible or even 
conceivable. But long before this point in world-mak- 
ing w^as I'cached the earth had passed through a con- 



60 GENESIS r AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

dition of the most intense heat — in fact, had been a 
miniature sun ; and tlie spectroscope tells us that light 
emitted from such a body must have been identical 
with tliat which now comes from the sun, and hence 
' good ' light. It is probaMe that the sun itself had by 
that time reached a condition the same in all but size 
as at the present day, and hence its light, too, was 
' good.' The verdict of approval and completion was 
therefore rightly placed before the separation between 
light and darkness. Only by a violation of the true 
order could Moses have placed the verdict later ; and 
this is so, whether he referred to the light emitted 
by our earth or by the sun ; in either case light was 
perfected before the earth ceased to be self-luminous. 

As this seems to me a matter of importance, you 
will pardon me if I dwell upon it. Suppose, then, 
Moses had written : 

^'And God said. Let there be light: and there was 
light. And God divided the light from the darkness. 
And God saw the ligbt, that it was good." 

Such an order would have exactly harmonized with 
the old belief that a faint twiliglit, a mingled light 
and darkness, first slione upon our earth. Those 
who hold this belief might well speak, from their 
stand-point, of the w^isdom of the writer in placing 
the divine verdict after the two elements had been 
separated, perhaps with a lurkingbelief that he would 
have done still better had he deferred it until after 



UR FIRST E VENING. 6 1 

the close of the fourth day. But had he so placed it, 
its position would have been in direct conflict with 
important facts in the w^orld's history, facts which 
have only recently been discovered ; in fact, only since 
the invention of the spectroscope. 

The Mosaic order is : first, darkness ; then, mo- 
tion : then, lio^ht ; next, the \\^\\t is 

' ? » ? ? !d ^ ^ Darkness. 

'good' — that is, perfected; then, a divis- LiRht. Light 

good. A sepa- 

ion between the light and darkness ; and, ration. Day 

. and night. 

day and night begin. 

Can it be bettered ? Nay, is it possible to make 
the shghtest change in it w^ithout the most serious 
consequences to what we calh science? Instead of a 
bhmder, there is here proof of the omniscience of the 
author of this account, the more marvelous because, 
until lately, it seemed just the opposite. 

" This," said the Professor, " is a most extraordi- 
nary document ! What you say about light is true. 
For as soon as the earth passed from a gas or vapor 
to a liquid its light must have been the same in all 
its properties as present solar light, '^ and I have no 
doubt that, at so late a period in cosmical development, 
the then solar light had attained all its present qualities, 
and it was after this that day and night began." 

* It matters nothing in reference to my argument whetlier the in- 
terior of the sun now is liquid, or, as some think, enormously con- 
densed gas. Whichever it is, our world, to reach its present condi- 
tion, passed through the same state long before it became nou- 
lumihous. 



C2 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

To me tliei'e is iiotliing in the account so wonder- 
ful, and so unaccountable on any human theory of its 
origin, as the accuracy of its order even to the minut- 
est details. I shall often have occasion to sj^eak of 
this. 

But these verses are rich in precious veins of truth ; 
how rich we can know only when onr knowledge 
has become perfect. One more, at least, I can now 
see. . 

Our world, as Professor Huxlev told his hearers, 
in his !New York lectures, and as all scientists believe, 
was once a mass of incandescent vapor, which passed 
by cooling to a liquid condition, self-luminous like 
the sun, then to a solid opaque planet. What cir- 
cumstance, or perhaps it would be better to say, 
what phenomenon w^ould have indicated to a spec- 
tator, had there been one, the close of the first or 
igneous period, and the beginning of the present, 
when the earth is dependent upon the sun for light ? 

" It is evident enough," he replied, " that the close 
of the one period and the beginning of the other were 
characterized by the complete cessation of the earth's 
emitting light, and, so far as I can see, by no other 
circumstance. Had we been supported at some point 
in space where we could watch the progress of the 
transition w^e would have noticed but little difference 
at first between the brightness of the side toward the 
sun and of that turned in the opposite direction. 



UR FIRST E VENING. 63 

But as time passed and the earth grew less and less 
hot, its light grew less intense, and a difference be- 
tween the brillianc)^ of its two sides began to mani- 
fest itself. This increased until at last one side dis- 
appeared in the darkness of its own shadow, while 
the other was illuminated by the light of the sun. 
The completion of this process indicated the end of 
the igneous period and the beginning of the present. 
It was also the beginning of day and night ; not, of 
course, of revolutions on its axis, but of alternate light 
and darkness. 

'^ Excuse my boasting of science," said the Pro- 
fessor, '' but is it not marvelous that by its aid we are 
able to tell of events in our world's history wliich 
occurred so many million years ago, and to point out 
the great final event of the igneous period, the begin- 
ning of the present, or true planetary condition ? " 

Yes, it is marvelous, and one can but stand in 
reverent wonder before the power of the human in- 
tellect. But to me there is sometliing far more 
wonderful than that when I read in this narrative, 
written thousands of years ago by the leader of a 
semi-barbarous nation of fugitive slaves, as the closing 
fact in this first stage of world-making, that God 
divided betw^een the light and the darkness ; and tlien, 
as if more definitely to fix the meaning and tlie 
epoch, that God called the light day, and the dark- 
ness called he night ; and notice that it is the very 



64 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

circumstance wliich, as you have justly said, marks 
the close of the earlier and the beginning of tlie 
present condition. 

As to the many events between the first appearance 
of light and this separation, Moses omits them all. 
In the nature of the case so brief an account could 
touch upon only a few of the most important transac- 
tions in the period of which it treats. He merely 
passes over the others, neither aflSrming nor denying 
any thing about them. Really, I can see nothing 
herewith which science can justly find fault."^ 

'^ Why, there is this : astronomers have shown that 
Objection 11. this division occurred may ages after the 
th^'becrel- ^^^st appearance of light, wliile Moses 
tion thus far g^^^g ^j^^ wholc Creation thus far only oc- 

occupied only "^ *> 

one day." cupied ouc day." 

Moses says that ! Where does he say it ? 

" He does not say that in just these words. But it 
is his meaning." 

I do not so understand it. (I then read aloud all 
the chapter down to the fifth verse.) I find, after 
several statements describing as many transactions, 
one saying that, as our version has it, the evening 

* How large a book would have been required for all the impor- 
tant and interesting facts in those millions of years! Think of the 
volumes necessary for what is now known, and how little that is in 
comparison with what remains to be discovered. However much 
God might have revealed, it would always be a mere fragment of an 
infinite whole. 



OUR FIRST EVENING. 65 

and the morning were the first day. Moses had just 
said that God divided between the light and the dark- 
ness, and that God called the light day and the dark- 
ness night ; and as these were the first evening and 
morning — were they not the first ? — he adds merely 
that they were the first day. Here is no error. They 
were really the first day. 

"But," said the Professor, "I have been told by 
many, and have read it in commentaries, that Moses 
means, not that the evening and the morning were 
the first day, but that all thus far was done on that 
one day ; and I know it is not so." 

We agreed not to let our discussion w^ander off to 
what others have said. We have before us the narra- 
tive itself. We are not inquiring as to the truth of 
somebody's explanation or theory, but as to the state- 
ments of Moses himself, and he does not say that any 
thing was done on that day. It may and probably 
does mean that all thus far was done before that first 
day. 

" If we are to be narrowed to that I must of course 
admit that the first evening and morning after that 
division were literally the first day of the earth. Bnt 
for all that it seems hardly credible that so many 
persons should have thought Moses meant to say, God 
created things thus far in one day, if there had not 
been good grounds for their belief." 

Many good men, I replied, have thought the stars 



66 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

were specks of light, and the sun infinitely less than our 
earth. You do not find in their belief any good rea- 
son for rejecting the conclusions of more modern 
observers. Where they differ from present astrono- 
mers you do not make it a question of authority, nor 
even of numbers, with which you shall side, but you 
appeal directly to the volume of nature. As to what 
Moses meant it is equally right to appeal from an- 
cient or modern commentators to the written record 
which he has left us. 

"I must admit that he should not be condemned 
for what others have said. He should be tried by his 
own words, and certainly they do not say that all this 
was done in one day. But, admitting your exposition 
to be true, we know that this process of cooling was 
very long;, and consequently that there 

Objection 12. ./ &' ^ J ^ 

No abrupt was no abrupt change from a luminous 
to a non-luminous condition, and hence 
no day so marked. The change must have been im- 
perceptible. How then can you speak of any one 
day when it was completed ? " 

True, the process was gradual, and so is the growth 
of a person from boyhood to manhood. There is a 
day up to which he is an infant, and on which he is 
invested with all the rights of manhood. You would 
think it strange to be accused of falsehood, or even of 
inaccuracy, because you spoke of the first day of your 
being a man. So in regard to our planet; it perhaps 



OUR FIRST EVENING. 67 

was impossible to say at what moment the change 
from a luminous to a non-luminous state was com- 
pleted. It may have been when the last lake of 
glowing lava was skimmed over with a black crust ; 
but, whenever it was, it marked the end of the old 
condition and the beginning of the new. It was the 
natal day of a world. 

Just then the striking of a clock reminded us of 
the lateness of the hour. We agreed to stop here 
and to resume our conversation the next evening. 



There is one objection to the truth of this ac- 
count which its opponents for a long time thouglit 
fatal, and w^hichhas given its friends much 

1 T m .1 ^ Objection 13. 

needless trouble, io meet it they have 
devised some strange theories. I refer to the fact, 
long thought so unaccountable, that light is made to 
appear before the sun. Now we hear nothing of it, 
and as the reader, perhaps, has noticed, the Professor 
did not even refer to it. Of the correctness of this 
order tliere is not to-day the slightest question. I 
mention it only to note how the advance of knowl- 
edge sweeps away supposed difficulties. Our agnostic 
friends, with easy forgetfulness, seem not to remem- 
ber that such an objection was ever made. 



68 GENESIS I, AND MODERN SGIENGE, 



OUR SECOND EVENING. 



THE THEME. 

Genesis i, 6-8. 

6 And God said^ Let there he a firmament in the midst of the waters, 

and let it divide the waters from the waters. 
1 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters ivhich were 

under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament : 

And it was so. 
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. 

And the evening and the morning were the second day. 

On the next evening the Professor came a little 
before the hour agreed upon. We at once settled 
ourselves to work. I opened the discussion. 

Well, Professor, we have followed the history of 
our world from that '' beginning " which bounds the 
earth's nebulous stage, on the one side, to that first 
day which bounds it on the other, and I think you 
must admit that those who claim a contradiction 
between the Mosaic account and astronomy and 
geology, or other sciences, have not, as yet, been jus- 
tified by any thing in the story itself. What adds to 
the marvelous character of this account is the fact 
that these statements relate to matters so profound 
that it is only within a few years that physicists have 
been able in some degree to see their w^ealth of mean- 
ing. Instead of this being, as lias been flippantly said, 



OUR SECOND EVENING, 69 

" a statement of obvious facts in the most natural 
order," the facts are not obvious, nor is their order 
tliat which would occur most naturally to one writing 
about the work of creation ; for the former escaped 
the keenest observers and the latter the most pro- 
found thinkers until within a generation. The more 
I reflect upon the matter the more I am impressed 
with the statements here made. It will help you see 
their value if you look at them, not in their theolog- 
ical relations, but in their relation to science. Our 
agnostic friends say that what Moses wrote is either 
false or of trifling consequence. Let us see. 

If it is not true that the heavens and earth had a be- 
ginning, then the sun has not been losing energy, or its 
stores would long ago have been exhausted. But, 
unless the sun is constantly giving off energy, all our 
present ideas as to force, energy, heat, and light are 
in error. Nor, if there was no beginning, can there 
possibly be a resisting medium in space, for, liowever 
small the resistance, if there was no beginning all the 
force which propels the planets in their orbits would 
inflnite ages ago have been exhausted. Nor can 
there be any friction of the tides, or the earth would 
long ago have ceased to turn on its axis more than 
once in a year. 

If the earth was never " without form and void," 
then it never was a portion of a nebula, nor even in a 
gaseous state, and the evidence from the igneous rocks, 



70 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

and the present semi-fluid condition of Jupiter and 
Saturn, is all worthless. Wliat would agnostic phi- 
losophy do without a world once formless and void ? 

If Moses erred when placing darkness before motion, 
then the correlation of forces is a myth, and we have 
absolutely no theory as to the nature of light. I call, 
therefore, upon those who deny the accuracy of the 
Mosaic order to give some tlieory of light which shall 
be consistent with light before motion. 

If Moses was in error when he attributed the first set- 
ting in motion to the same source as matter, then he 
erred in common with the physicists of to-day, for the 
existence of motion is as inexplicable as the existence 
of matter. 

If Moses errs when he places light after motion, 
then optics has no basis on which to stand. 

If Moses errs when he says that the light was 
"good " before there w^as a division between light and 
darkness, and, consequently, before that alternate 
light and darkness which is called day and night, then 
all that spectroscopists have told us as to the kind, 
quality, and differences of light from gases, liquids, 
and solids is only a misleading fiction. It is worse 
than of no value, for it leads to error. 

In brief, the correlation of forces, the undulatory 
theory of light — and the corpuscular too, for that 
matter — and the nebular theory, each is disproved, 
and the spectroscope shown to be of little worth, if 



OUR SECOND EVENING. 71 

the physical statements in these verses are nntrne or 
if their order is wrong. Snrely these are no trivial 
matters. 

'' I mnst grant," said the Professor, '' that there 
is here something very different from what I have 
been taught and have believed. So far objectiouii 
as I can see there is no escape from your ^^^^ ^hat^e 
argument save on the theory that Moses says. 
did not mean w^hat his words seem to say." 

But that is not an escape, because we are not dis- 
cussing the extent of his knowledge, but whether his 
words do, without unfair straining, describe conditions 
that once existed, and w^hether these conditions really 
occurred in the order in which he has (unwittingly, if 
you please) placed them. 

" Well, then, if that be ruled out there is another 
answer which some will make, althoup-h I 

' ^ Objection 15. 

cannot adopt it. They will say matter has Matter has ai- 

, • ; 1 1 i.' 1 r» 1 ways existed. 

always existed and motion and lorce nave 
always been. This is contrary to all that modern sci- 
ence has shown of the dissipation of energy.^ It is a 
pure conjecture, founded neither on facts nor on argu- 
ment, but is an assumption to avoid certain conclusions 
which otherwise appear inevitable. It leads to panthe- 
ism, if not to absolute atheism. If it allows of any 

*This dissipation of energy is a curious and interesting subject. 
See Tail's Recent Advances in Physical Science^ pp. 20, 21. Also, 
Thomson, On a Universal Tendency in Nature to Dissipation of Energyy 
Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburg, 1852. 



72 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

God, it does not allow of a creator. He merely co- 
exists with matter and force, if, indeed, lie is not the 
product of the two. I camiot stultify myself with 
such a belief, for, although I have not been able to 
accept a revelation, yet I do believe in a creator. 

" As I have said, I find this account a very differ- 
ent matter from w^hat I expected, and I will add that 
I am anxious to know how you get along with the 
rest of it." 

We will, then, take up the history of our globe 
from the time it became non-luminous, because, as 
you have already noticed, it seems easier to grasp the 
meaning of these pregnant sentences if we turn first 
to what science has revealed. What, just after day 
and night began, must have been the condition of the 
earth's surface ? 

''It must have been," he replied, "one vast ex- 
panse of scorige, or hardened lava, intensely hot, but 
not glowing. Above its surface was an atmosphere 
loaded wdth hot vapor, forming clouds of whose ex- 
tent and density we can form some conception when 
we reflect that all the present waters, whether in 
oceans, lakes, or rivers, existed at first as steam. As 
there is water enough to cover the globe to the depth 
of about twelve thousand feet, the pressure must have 
been somewhere about six thousand pounds on the 
square inch from that alone, to say nothing of the 
carbonic acid and other impurities w^hicli also existed 



OUR SECOND EVENING. 73 

as gas or vapor. Under sucli enormous weight, it is 
in accordance with all we know of vapors to believe 
that a large portion was condensed to a liquid long 
before the heat of the eartli's crust sank to the tem- 
perature of boihng water. An immense amount 
must have remained as vapor, and covered the eartli 
with an envelope of clouds hundreds of miles in thick- 
ness, and thereby excluded the light of the sun. On 
the earth's surface, therefore, were intensely hot 
waters, and resting on them dense clouds reaching 
far beyond the present limits of the atmosphere. On 
the outside of this envelope the sun shone as brightly 
as now, but within, and resting on the surface of the 
hot sea, was thick darkness." ^ 

What, in your opinion, was the next step to be taken 
in the process of preparation for plants or animals 
to exist on the earth ? 

'' It might seem a matter of indifference whether 
the dense clouds should be removed, thus admitting 
the light, and of course implying a temperature so 
low that life could endure it, or whetlier the land 
was elevated first. But this is wrong. Before the 
land was fit to be elevated above the waiters there 
was a long preparatory process, during which the 
primeval rocks were broken and ground up to form 

*The reader will recall the sublime words of the Almighty, 
" When I made the cloud tlie garment thereof, and tliick darkness a 
swaddHn":-b:ind for it." 



74 GENESIS I, AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

gravel, sand, and finer material indispensable for 
future soils which should be capable of sustaining 
land plants and land animals. At the same time 
the waters were being purified by the removal of 
their excess of carbonate of lime, and other sub- 
stances, which would have been fatal to all vertebrate 
forms of life, but which were indispensable compo- 
nents of the future soils. To bring about such re- 
moval corals, mollusks, and countless other marine 
creatures of the lowest forms were needed. I need 
not say that marine life required marine vegetation ; 
and that both animals and vegetation were impossible 
without a lower temperature and sunlight. Hence it 
was not a matter of indifference which came first. It 
was necessary that the dense clouds should be thinned 
out, the water deposited, and sunlight admitted be- 
fore the land was elevated above the seas. It is won- 
derful how science reveals even the order of Nature's 
operations ! " 

And what phenomenon, I asked, would have in- 
dicated to a spectator, had one been there, the close 
of this stage of preparation ? 

'' I can think of no other than a transparent or open 
atmosphere, like the present, high up in which there 
might be floating clouds, but which was clear enough 
to permit the heavenly bodies to be seen. Such an 
atmosphere would indicate a temperature at which 
the lower forms of life would be possible." 



OUR SECOND EVENING, 75 

Now, please compare what you have been saying 
with tbat which is found in this narrative, and which 
Moses says did occur. He tells us that God (through 
his laws, if you please) made an expanse — rakia, he 
calls it — " in the midst of the waters." Here you 
will notice a verbal nicety, which, in view of the 
actual occurrences, and in connection with the gen- 
eral drift of the account, seems to be worthy of at- 
tention. The expanse was to be formed ''in the 
midst of the waters " — that is, there were waters above 
it as well as below it when it began to form. The 
process began not at the top nor at the bottom of the 
waters, but in the midst. Now place that in the light 
of your remark a few moments ago, that under the 
enormous pressure much of the vapor on our globe 
must have been reduced to a liquid form at a temper- 
ature far above the boiling point, 212 degrees Fahr., 
and you will see that the description is in harmony 
with the fact. Tlie expanse, or clearing, began most 
probably near or at the surface of the waters already 
condensed — water below and water in form of vapor 
and dense clouds above the inchoate expanse. Let- 
ting this pass, you will observe that after the expanse 
was completed the account says there were Avaters 
above it and below it ; and, lastly, that it so reached 
out into space that it formed a sky, and, as Moses 
expressed it, "God called it heaven." Certainly we 
cannot complain of any disagreement here. 



76 GEKESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

" Yes," lie replied, '' this is all very curious, and 
Objection 16 P^^'^^ps Hiore than curious, but does not 
A literal exe- yQ-^j* exeo;esis lead to an absurd result ? 

gesis leads to *^ ^ 

an absurdity. Yq^^ gay that the Tokia is the open space 
above us, and more especially that part between the 
clouds and the waters in tlie seas ; and in the account 
we read, as you have said, that God called the 'rakia^ 
heaven ; and further on, that God placed the sun, 
moon, and stars in the ' rakia ' of heaven. Now, 
does it not fairly follow that Moses must have 
believed tliat these bodies were somewhere in the 
air?" 

I think not. I have already referred to the won- 
derful descriptive power of the Hebrew. In this 
lies the explanation. " Shamayim^^'' the word trans- 
lated ^4ieaven," is literally the high place. Now, 
what could be more natural and appropriate than to 
style the expanse from the earth upward to the clouds 
and beyond, the " sliamayim^^ and then, by a com- 
mon use of words, to include in it all that it seemed 
to contain, and so extend the word not only to the 
limited ''high regions" of clouds, but to all that 
could be seen in the " shamayhn " — the high regions 
beyond ? 

One, however wise, if he employed human language 
at all, could do no otherwise than speak of sun, moon, 
and stars as situated in the ''shamayhn'''^ — the word 
in most common use among the Hebrews to describe 



OUR SECOND EVENING. 77 

all that we now include in our English term heav- 
-ens. 

But we have yet to note the order of these great 
events. The depositing of the water and the clear- 
ing of the atmosphere are not represented as occur- 
ring before the division between the light and the 
darkness. Had they been so placed you could justly 
claim that Moses had made an error, for we know, 
although he did not, that before the division — that is, 
before the earth ceased to be self-luminous — its sur- 
face was too hot for such a process. Indeed, it is 
highly probable that while the earth was molten 
water existed only as it does now in the sun — that is, 
as hydrogen and oxygen. 

On the other hand, if Moses had said that this 
great event occurred after the dry land appeared, 
geologists would justly claim this as an error, for they 
tell lis that the continents came up out of the water. 
And, as you remarked a few moments ago, it was not 
a matter of indifference which came first. The possi- 
bility of land plants and animals existing depended 
on the order of these events. If the continents had 
been raised to their present elevation before the wa- 
ters w^ere deposited, they would have remained bari*en 
wastes of naked rock to this day. I ask you, there- 
fore, to notice that whatever the source of this ac- 
count, the order in which it places these two great 
events is that which you claim as one of the wonder- 



75 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

ful discoveries of science. In short, this stage of 
progress has its proper place just where Moses put it. 
There it is true; elsewhere it would have been a 
blunder. 

To this the Professor replied : " "While I cannot 
deny what you say, I must say this is not Genesis, 
if I am to believe the general voice of commentators 
and of the Hebrews themselves, who certainly under- 
stood their own language. They tliought there was 
Objection 17. over them a real firmament, something 
fh'TugrtS! solid, which held up the heavenly bodies 
mament solid. ^^^ jj^d doors and windows. This idea 
of vacant space, vacant as to any solid support for the 
sky, is a modern thought for which the world is in- 
debted to science." 

I shall not discuss the claims of science ; our busi- 
ness is with Genesis, and the question is not as to 
what some one else has said or written, but as to what 
Moses said. Did the word '' rakia^'' translated in our 
version " firmament," convey at that time to any one 
the idea of solidity, or was this meaning tacked on 
long after in harmonj^ with the '' science " of a much 
later age ? 

" Of course, every scholar knows that rakia means 
an expanse J but how did it happen that so many 
among the earliest commentators attached to it the 
sense of solidity ? " 

That could be explained, I think, by the false 



OUR SECOND EVENING. 79 

" science " of their day. They had great confidence 
in their knowledge, and, possessing at the same time 
a rugged belief in revelation, they forced the two to 
agree, and interpolated the idea of solidity to make 
the statements of Moses harmonize with their belief 
in crystal spheres rising above the earth like so many 
watch-glasses. It is a hard lesson, not yet half learned 
by tlie friends or opponents of that story, to take its 
words as they are and let the truth take care of itself. 
It must be remembered, too, that the very earliest 
commentators and translators lived so long after 
Moses that they had no special opportunity of knowing 
what he or his contemporaries understood by the word 
mistranslated ^' firmament." 

As the '' error " of Moses in calling the expanse a 
firmament has been a stock argument against the truth 
of this narrative I asked my friend's permission to 
read part of an article which I wrote for the Biblio- 
theca Sacra^ and which appeared July, 1879. I turned 
to the article and read as follows : 

" ' Whoever,' it is said, ' wrote the first chapter of 
Genesis left upon record that '' God made a firma- 
ment," by which was necessarily conveyed to the He- 
brews then living the idea of something solid, a strong 
crystalline arch, rising as a dome above the earth 
and separating the waters in the seas below it from 
certain otliei' waters above it. As no such arch ex- 
ists, the writer who said so could not have written 
6 



80 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

under the guidance of One infinitely wise.' The mind 
refuses to attribute error to God, and hence it is dif- 
ficult to see how the conclusion is to be avoided if the 
premises are correct. 

^^It becomes, therefore, important to discover 
whether rakia^ rendered firmament in our version, was 
employed by the early Hebrews to convey the idea of 
firmness and solidity. The word occurs nine times in 
the first chapter of Genesis ; but a careful scrutiny 
fails to reveal any shade of meaning tliat may not be 
equally well expressed by expanse. Tlie only ap- 
parent exception is found in the statement that the 
Tokia divided the waters from the waters. When 
men began to philosophize they found, as they 
thought, a physical absurdity in the idea of a mere 
expanse sustaining the volume of water which at times 
descended to deluge the ground ; therefore they 
translated rakia by stereoma^ a firmament, some- 
thing solid, and so, by forcing the language to suit 
their ^science,' got rid of a supposed difficulty, 
one, however, which existed only in their own im- 
agination. 

''But it may be said that although 'expanse' is in 
harmony with the facts of nature, yet Moses did not 
know it, and consequently used the word rakia be- 
cause it expressed the solidity and firmness which in 
his opinion really existed. 

" If this is true, the idea of solidity and firmness 



OUR SECOND EVENING. 81 

should be clearly found in the radical meaning of the 
word rakia^ and in its cognates as employed elsewhere. 
Should this be the case, then we must admit that 
Moses committed an error ; but if, on the contrary, 
the idea of solidity and firmness should prove to be 
wanting, then the charge of error, so far as it is based 
upon the use of that word, fails. 

" Rakia occurs outside of this chapter only eight 
times. In Dan. xii, 8, we read : ' And they that be 
wise shall shine as the brightness of the raMa^ 
Here, certainly, is no a-sertion of solidity, nothing 
to forbid the use of any expression denoting the 
sky ; as, for example, ' heaven.' When Ezekiel 
says, ' The likeness of the rakia was ... as the color 
of the terrible crystal • (Ezek. i, 22), he speaks not of 
solidity, but only of color. Nor is there any such 
idea in verse 23 : ' Under the rakia were their wings 
straight.' So in verses 25, 26 : ' There was a voice 
from the rakia that was over their heads, . . . and above 
the rakia was the likeness of a throne, as the appear- 
ance of a sapphire stone.' And again, in x, 1 : ^ In the 
rakia . . . there appeared over them as it were a sapphire 
stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne.' 

''In none of these is there any idea of solidity 
necessarily connected with rakia. On tlie contrary, 
throughout this mystical imagery there is a careful 
guarding against it. The prophet says that the rakia 
was glorious in color and appearance. It was not 



82 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

crystal ; it was the color of crystal. It was not a sap- 
phire stone ; but over it, or on it, was the appearance 
of a throne made of sapphire stone. It is probably 
impossible to reduce this mysterious vision to actual 
form, harmonizing every detail. Yet in some of its 
grand outlines w^e may succeed. 

" As the prophet stood by the river Chebar, a great 
cloud arose in the north. Out of its mist seemed to 
come four living creatures. The part of the cloud 
over their heads glowed in the light emanating from 
these beings, ' like the terrible crystal.' They stood 
below tliis canopy, w^ith their wings straight, one 
toward the other. The prophet heard a voice from 
above it, and, looking up, saw above all as it were a 
throne of sapphire stone, and upon it the figure of a 
man. In short, the appearance over them was as 
the brilliancy of that eastern sky. It was the glorious 
expanse, and w^as appropriately described by rahia^ 
taken in one of its secondary meanings, which will be 
hereafter discussed. 

" The word rakia occurs elsewhere only twice, both 
in the Psalms. Psa. xix, 1 : ' The heavens declare 
the glory of God, and the rakia showeth his handy- 
work.' Here rakia is in apposition w^itli heavens, 
and no more conveys the idea of solidity than would 
our word ' sky.' Psa. cl, 1 : ^ Praise him in the 
7'akia of his power.' Here the same idea occurs as 
in the previous text. It means no more than 'in 



OUR SECOND EVENING. 88 

the heaven of his power.' And this recalls Gen. 
i, 8, where God calls the rakia heaven.^ 

" It seems that from these passages alone the idea of 
a solid support could never have occurred to minds 
not preoccupied with the ' science ' of their own age, 
when men had begun in an imperfect and blind way 
to philosophize on the phenomena of nature. 

" But it may be replied that the idea of solidity and 
firmness so enters into the radical meaning of the 
word and its cognates that we are forced to believe 
that Moses himself thought that there really was a 
strong solid arch above the earth, and intended to be 
so understood. Let us see. 

" Turning to the lexicon I find : 'Baha^ the root of 
rakia; to beat, to stamp, to beat out — that is, to spread 
out or to expand by beating,' etc. Cognate with this 
is, ' HahaJc^ to beat or pound, especially to spread out 
by beating, to beat thin.' Then there is, ' HikyiTii^ 
plates or laminse;' ' Rakia^ a thin cake or wafer;' 
' Makkah^ thinness, something thin; hence the temple, 
or part of the head ; ' ' Rak^ thin, lean, said of cattle ;' 
' Rakach^ to spice [the primary idea seems to lie in 
the pounding of the aromatic substances] ; hence 
rekach^ spice, and rokach^ a perfumer,' from the 
same idea of pounding up the aromatic substances. 

* Read these two texts in the light of the full meaning of rakia^ as 
it will be developed further on. '' In tlie ralcia of his power " will be 
found a wealth of meaning hitherto unsuspected. 



84 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

''Thus far, at least, there is nothing denoting solid- 
ity or firmness involved in rakia itself, or in any 
word allied to it.* 

" In all cases, as far as I can discover, it and its cog- 
nates are used to denote thinness or expansion, almost 
always associated with more or less noise and violence. 

" The absence from the Hebrew word of the idea of 
solidity and firmness, which are the very essence of 
a firmament, is not in harmony with the statements 
in Bible dictionaries. This greatly perplexed me 
at first ; but when I turned to the passages referred 
to as proofs my perplexity was turned to surprise; 

* According to the Hebraist's Yade Mecum, tlie verb raka occurs 
only eleven times in tfcie whole Hebrew Bible, all of which I quote as 
translated in our common version : 

1. Ezek. vi, 11, '' Smite with thine hand and stamp with thy foot." 

2. Ezek. XXV, 6, "Because . . . thou hast stamped with the feet." 

3. .2 Sam. xxii, 43, "I did stamp them as the mire of the street, and 
did spread them abroad^ 

4. Isa. xl, 19, "The goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold." 

5. Isa. xlii, 5, " He that spread forth the earth." 

6. Isa. xliv, 24, " That stretcheth forth the heavens (shamayim) 
alone : that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself." 

I. Psa. cxxxvi, 6, "To him that stretched out the earth." 

8. Exod. xxxix, 3, " They did heat the gold into thin plates. '''' 

9. Num. xvi, 39, " And they were made troad plates ^^^ etc. 

10. Jer. X, 9, " Silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish." 

II. Job xxxvii, 18, " Hast thou with him spread out the sky? " etc. 
An examination of the above reveals several interesting facts. In 

1 and 2 the idea seems to be purely the noise made by stamping with 
the foot either in despair or in exultation, and tlie word raka is justly 
rendered in the Sepiuagint by p)sopheo^ and with no reference to the 
other idea of spreading out or expanding. In 3 there is no reference 
to the sound, but only to the spreading out ; so in 4, where raka is 



OUR SECOND EVENING, 85 

for in nearly all that were quoted as evidence of the 
Hebrews' belief in a firmament the word in question 
is not to be found. In Smith's Bible Dictionary I 
find the following : ' Heaven ; there are four He- 
brew words thus rendered in the Old Testament': 
First, liahia^ a solid expanse. Through its open lat- 
tice (Gen. vii, 11 ; 2 Kings vii, 2, 19), or doors (Psa. 
Ixxviii, 23), the dew and snow and hail are poured 
upon the earth (Job xxxviii, 22, 37). This firm vault 
Job describes as being strong as a molten looking- 
glass (Job xxxvii, 18).' [In not one of these seven 
texts does rakia occur !] 

translated by perichruseo. In 5, 6, *7, it may be that the allusion is 
only to the spreading out ; but to the ear of one who, with the writer, 
believes that the Bible was in a very real sense indited by Him who 
was himself the Maker of that first rahia^ there is in the use of the 
'word liere an echo of the tumultuous deafening violence when first 
the down-pouring oceans beat upon the hot lava crust whose ridges 
and peaks then formed the rough face of the earth. Whether this be 
so may not be as clear to others ; but I think all will agree that our 
English version, to spread abroad or forth^ or to stretch out^ is reason- 
ably near the original ; while the stereoo of the Septuagint is a gross 
mistranslation, or, rather, it is no translation at all, but the substitu- 
tion of another idea to accord with the philosophy of their own day. 

With the same unhappy prepossession in favor of solidity the 
Seventy have rendered this word raka in 11 by stereoo^ as well as in 
6, 6, T. 

In 8, 9, 10, there is the proper meaning of beating into thin plates, 
not plates thick and strong. 

It is curious to note that this word has always its proper render- 
ing in the Septuagint except where the philosophy of that day is 
concerued. Bearing this in mind, I am led to the conclusion that 
these texts confirm what has been said in the previous article about 
the signification oi rakia. 



86 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

'^ ^ It is transparent as a sappliiro and splendid as 
crystal, Dan. xii, 3 ; Ezek. i, 22 [I liave discussed 
these a few paragraphs hack] ; Exod. xxiv, 10 [^rakia 
not found here] ; over which rests tlie throne of God, 
Isa. Ixvi, 1 [no ralda^^ and Ezek. i, 26 [already dis- 
cussed a few paragraphs back] ; and which is opened 
for the descent of angels or for prophetic vision, Gen. 
xxviii, 17; Ezek. i, 1 [found in neither of these]. In 
it, like gems or golden lamps, the stars are fixed, '^' Gen. 
i, 14, 19 [found here, and already discussed] ; and the 
whole magnificent, immovable structure, Jer. xxxi, 
37 \rakia not here], has its pillars or strong founda- 
tions, Psa. xviii, 7 ; 2 Sam. xxii, 8 ; Job xxiv, 11 ' 
[rakia in none of these]. 

" The writer, the Rev. Frederick W. Farrar, late 
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, makes a clear 
case for a solid support, or firmament, until one finds 
that in fifteen of his proof-texts (the only ones that 
have any bearing upon the question of solidity) rakia 
does not occur. Nothing can be learned from them 
as to the use of this word. Whatever they teach as 
to other words, it is clear they tell us nothing about 
rakia. 

" He adds : ' In the Authorized Version heaven and 



* "Tn it, like p^cms or golden lamps, tlie stars arc fixed." Moses 
makes no such slatonient. lie simply says Ood made tlie stars, and 
])];iced them in llio expanse. It would bo mucli belter not to put 
words into his mouth. 



OUR SECOND EVENING. 87 

heavens are used to render not only rcikia^ but also slia- 
mayinij marom^ and sK chakim^ for which reason we 
have thrown together under the former word the chief 
features ascribed by Jewish writers to this portion of 
the universe.' Unfortunately for this explanation, 
heaven and heavens are not used in a single instance in 
tlie Authorized Version to render rakia. In most 
cases shamayim is the word so translated. "Whether 
the Hebrews attaclied the idea of solidity to that does 
not concern our present inquiry. It will suffice to 
say that it means literally ' heights,' and there is no 
more reason for thinking that they took literally such 
expressions as the ' windows of heaven ' (not of the 
Tokia^ remember, but of the shamayim) any more 
than that they did that verse in Job which speaks of 
' the bottles of heaven ' (also sJiannayirri). 

" From all this it is clear, I think, that the science 
which demanded crystalline spheres to uphold the 
heavenly bodies was of a much later date than the 
time in which it was written, ' He stretcheth * the 
north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth 
upon nothing.' 

* It is an interesting fact that " rakia " is not employed here. 
The reason is obvious : there is no possible allusion, near or remote, 
to, or connection with, the noise and violence which help to make 
the radical meaning of the word. The distinction is nice, but emi- 
nently philosophical, and in the light of present knowledge perfectly- 
intelligible. Every fact known to science was infinitely better known 
to God then than it ever can be to us. As far as he is concerned an 
anachronistrt is impossible. 



88 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

" What, then, is the meaning intended to be conveyed 
by raJcia f Fi'oui a careful consideration of all the 
places where this word and its cognates occur it seems 
that the radical idea of the verb is (a) to spread out 
w^ith violence and noise, or, rather, it is to make thin 
in that manner. Its sound is indicative of its meaning 
— a thing common in all languages, as, for example, 
we speak of the buzzing of a saw, the whizzing of 
an arrow, etc. Rah-a^ or its cognate rak-'kak^ rep- 
resents to the ear very closely the noise or racket of 
the mechanic beating or hammering thin a piece 
of metal — a sound more common in the times before 
the process of rolling out metal had been invented. 
It is noise and violence, not firmness nor solidity. 
Then succeeds the more abstract idea (S), an expand- 
ing or thinning produced by violent action accompa- 
nied by loud noise. Lastly ((?), there is the idea of 
mere expanse, without any particular reference to the 
violence or noise. 

^' Such changes of meaning are common in all lan- 
guages. We may say : ' Casting iron is very hard 
work.' The hearer at once thinks of the severe 
muscular labor of the men engaged. If we say, 
^ Casting iron requires much skill,' he will think of 
the proper mixing of diflEerent qualities of the metal, 
of the best methods of melting, and the means of 
determining the proper temperature. But if we say, 
' The boat is loaded with castings,' he thinks only of 



OUR SECOND EVENING. 89 

the results of that operation, and, althougli the word 
' casting ' carries with it a suggestion of the heat and 
labor, yet he will not think of them. 

" The changes in the meaning of rakia are analo- 
gous to these. It is only at the present day, when 
science has revealed the scene at the time when the 
first deposition and separation of the waters occurred, 
that it has become possible to grasp the wealth of 
meaning in the word rakia, 

" This is the story wliich geology tells : At a distance 
back in eternity whose remoteness our arithmetic is 
powerless to compute, but after the earth had ceased 
to be self-luminous and a somewhat lower temperature 
had changed the invisible vapor of the future oceans 
into dense masses of clouds hundreds of miles in thick- 
ness, the time came for the second divine fiat. In the 
language of science, the temperature had fallen to the 
point at which the waters began to condense and de- 
scend upon the yet hot earth-surface. Think of the 
noise, the violence, ten million Niagaras pouring down 
at once into as many Etnas. No pencil can paint the 
scene; but we may imagine something of the hot 
rocks rent by the sudden cooling, the noise of the fall- 
ing oceans, the added uproar of such electric distui'b- 
ances as never will be known again until the 'crack 
of doom.' In throes such as these began the clearing 
of our atmosphere, perfected through aeons of time, 
until the ocean-holding cloud was thinned down to 



90 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

those that now float in the upper air ; the thick dark- 
ness caused by the dense masses of primeval, misty 
vapors that rested on the surface of the eartli, grew 
less and less, until at last the light of tlie sun passed 
freely through, and a transparent expanse divided the 
waters from the waters. When, in after ages, there 
came a seer to record what had taken place, we may 
imagine him searching to the foundation his mother- 
tongue to find the word which should best depict the 
scene. Guided by the All-wise, he selected rakia^ a 
word which no other language can equal in power of 
conveying the threefold idea of an expanse produced 
by violent physical action and accompanied by noise. 
'Expanse,' the best word our English can give, is 
poor indeed in comparison. 

" In these senses ((X, 5, c) the false philosophy of the 
Septuagint disappears, and in its place is absolute 
truth. If the texts above quoted, containing this word, 
be read in this light we shall find dominant the sec- 
ondary idea (c) — that is, an expanse only, without ref- 
erence to the mode of its formation. 

" In the first chapter of Genesis all the meanings are 
found. In verses 6 and 7 it is, ^ Let there be a thin- 
ning or expanding in the midst of the waters,' carry- 
ing with the word an echo of the violence and noise 
of the process. In verse 8 the writer speaks of the 
expanse after the noise and tumult had subsided. 
It was the quiet, open expanse extending through 



OUR SECOND EVENING, 91 

and beyond all limits of vision, which God called 
heaven. 

"Again, in verses 14, 15, 17, and 20 occurs the same 
use as in verse 8. It is the completed expanse of to- 
day, carrying with it, save in the suggestive sound of 
tlie word, no reminiscence of the primeval throes 
which accompanied its birth. 

" This combined idea of thinning and expansion, as 
here applied, comes somewhere near to that conveyed 
by our words, 'an open space.' But rakia^ in its 
intense truthfulness, describes the exact fact. To it 
no captious criticism can contrive objections ; whereas, 
had Moses said, ' Let there be an open space in the 
midst of the waters,' we should have been told that 
such an expression was clear proof of his ignorance of 
the depths of science which the future was to reveal ; 
for all philosophy teaches that the apparently open 
space is absolutely full, and that, so far as we know, 
there is nowhere in the universe a vacuum. Thus 
that which has been claimed as an argument against 
tlie truth of the Mosaic account is found, when tested 
in the light of science, to be a witness in its favor. 

" Considering the general belief at the time of the 
apostles in a crystalline arch over the earth to support 
the heavenly bodies, it is very remarkable that no 
expression is used by them indicating such a thing. 
The writers of the New Testament were familiar with 
the Septuagint and the use in it of stereoma ; yet 



92 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

they carefully avoid tlie word. Indeed, it occurs but 
once in the entire JSTew Testament ; and then it is 
applied to the faith of the early believers in the ex- 
pression, ' the steadfastness of your faith ' (Col. ii, 5). 

" I cannot close this article without speaking of a 
text often quoted by friends, as well as foes, to show 
that the Hebrews, or at least the countrymen of Job, 
did believe in a solid crystalline arch. It occurs in 
Job xxxvii, 18. Our version reads : 'Hast thou with 
him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a 
molten looking-glass?' The word here rendered 
'strong' does not mean strong in the sense of solid 
or firm, but, as its derivation shows, strong in the sense 
of securely tied or fastened. It is the idea of binding 
up to its place securely, not by solid mason-work, nor 
even by nails, but by bands and ligatures. ' Molten ' 
here is used in the sense of melted or fluid. I would 
suggest the following translation as more literal : 
' Hast thou with him q)read out the securely fastened 
sk}^, as it were a liquid mirror?' 

*' If the speaker had really desired to compare the 
sky to something solid and firm he would never have 
compared it to a molten (in the sense of cast, as cast 
brass, for example) mirror. A hammered n:iirror 
would have been stiffer than one made by casting. 
We have the notion of stiffness and firmness in con- 
nection with cast metal from our familiarity with cast 
iron. I doubt if Job knew any thing of that metal. 



OUR SECOND EVENING, 93 

Silver, brass, or other metal, except iron, is softest 
when cast and becomes firm by hammering. 

'' Elihu compares the sky (the clouds, hterally) reflect- 
ing the brilliancy of an eastern sun to a glowing molten 
(melted) mirror, somehow securely held by the 
Almighty. He mingles the thought with that, so 
natural to dwellers in that land, of a canopy stretched 
out overhead, and, in tent-style, tied up with bands 
and cords. He says to Job : ' Are you so great and 
strong that you can do that ? ' Pointing to the 
bright clouds, he asks : ' Can you with him spread 
out these clouds, so securely held in their places and 
sending back the light as if they were a mirror of 
glowing, melted metal ? ' 

'' I submit that this text has done forced duty long 
enough, and that henceforth it be permitted to speak 
to us as, I doubt not, it spoke to Job. 

" No one has the right to draw from the usual render- 
ing, even if it were correct, any argument against the 
inspiration of the Bible. Job's tliree friends were 
rebuked. We have no intimation that their philoso- 
phy was inspired any more than their theology, ^o 
more responsibility attaches to the Bible for their 
sayings than for those of Pharaoh or others whose words 
are recorded. The largest inference that can be justly 
drawn is that, if the common translation is correct. 
Job and his friends had erroneous views of the firma- 
ment, as hundreds of good men have had since." 



94 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

The Professor listened patieDtlj while I read ; then 
he said : '' I mnst admit that the idea of firmness 
and solidity seems quite foreign to the Hebrew word, 
and I must withdraw what I had regarded as a serious 
objection. But, admitting all this, we are not yet out 
of difficulty, for Moses teaches all this occurred in 

ob-ection 18 ^^^ ^^^ ' ^^^^ sccond day, he calls it. 
All till lately XJi^til scientists had shown the absolute ab- 

belleved the 

firmament was surdity of such a Statement all biblicists 

made Inside of i i i • 

twenty-four agreed that this stage oi progress was 
begun and ended in twenty-four hours — or 
rather in twelve hours, for they excluded the night — 
and, I may add, many believe so now." 

Once more I protest against bringing in the opinions 
of others, as they are of no importance save so far as 
they are sustained by the words of Moses. It is only 
the narrative that any body claims to be inspired. In 
that I find no assertion that this work was done in 
one day, nor, indeed, any reference whatever to the 
time employed. The writer says, " God made the 
' rakia,' and divided the waters which were under 
the ' rakia ' from the waters which were above the 
'rakia;' and it was so,^ and God called the 'rakia' 

* The translators of the Septuagint, with their desire to improve 
upon and correct the errors of Moses, removed the words " and it 
w^as so " from the seventh verse, where Moses put them, and annexed 
them to the sixth. To the seventh they added the words, "and God 
saw tliat it was good " — kalon — that is, beautiful and good. In like 
manner they interpolated into verse 20 the words, "and it was so." 



OUR SECOND EVENING. 95 

heaven." And after that a day is spoken of which is 
called the second day. It marks the completion of 
this act and separates it from the next. As mark- 
ing the conclusion of so great an event as the depo- 
sition of the waters, the clearing of the atmosphere, 
the admission of the sun's rays, and the consequent 
possibility of life, was it not well worthy of the dis- 
tinction ? It was the second of these epoch-marking 
days. 

" Certainly," he answered, " the day which marked 
the end of that great step in world-prog- objection i9. 

T, ,1 ,. With such liter- 

ress was well worth conmiemoratmg. aiismwhatwiii 
But this is a new kind of Genesis which ^"^^^ f'^^ 

rest of the 

keeps so close to the letter of the text, sibie ? 
Think to what absurd results it will lead. What, by 
such strict literalism, w^ill become of the rest of the 
Bible?" 

I find nothing absurd here. As to other parts of 
the Bible, they are not now under consideration. To 
speak of them would lead us away from the work 
which we have undertaken. I will say, however, in 
reply to your question that I expect to use in all parts 
of the Bible the same common sense which other 
books demand, and which, so far as I can see, is not 
opposed to any thing in this chapter. 

But to return to the matter in hand. Will you tell 
me what was the condition of the atmospliere when — 
and for a long time after — the w^aters were deposited ? 



96 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

" It is evident from tlie immense quantities of car- 
bon in the coal and lignites, all of which must once 
have been in the atmosphere, that it was heavily 
loaded with carbonic acid gas." ^ 

Could such an atmosphere have supported the 
higher forms of life ? 

^' No. It would have been fatal to all present air- 
breathing animals, unless possibly some of the lowest 
forms might have managed to live. Certainly no ver- 
tebrate could have endured it. But why do you ask 
these questions ? What have they to do with this 
account ? " 

Much, as you will see. If you will read the narra- 
tive through you will notice that the verdict "good" 
follows each stage of progress from the first day to 
the last, except this, an exception that has puzzled 
many a reader, and which some — the Septuagint, for 
example — have tried to remedy by interpolating such 
a verdict here. " Good," in all such matters as these, 
can have no reference to moral quality, but only to 
complete fitness for some purpose, which I take to be 
for the use of the coming man. And certainly an at- 
mosphere loaded with poison was not " good." This 
omission — unintelligible down almost to the present 

* Whether or not those geologists are right who assure us that 
during the Carboniferous age the atmosphere could not have been 
loaded with carbonic acid, is, in reference to the period of which I am 
speaking, a matter of no consequence. The " second day " antedates, 
by millions of years, the Carboniferous age. 



OUR SECOND EVENING. 97 

day — is another of those significant circumstances that 
go to prove the exhaustive knowledge possessed by 
whoever was the real author of this chapter. 

" This certainly," said the Professor, " is very curi- 

^ ous and very difficult to reconcile with any theory of 

chance. It is in perfect harmony with the facts, and 

yet they have been known for scarcely a generation." 

With this our discussion ended for that evening. 

We agreed to meet at the same place soon. 



GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 



OUR THIRD EVENING. 



THE THEME. 

Grenesis i, 9-13. 

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven he gathered together 
unto one place^ and let the dry land appear : and it was so. 

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together 
of the waters called he Seas : and God saw that it was good. 

1 1 And God said, Let the earth hring forth grass, the herh yielding 
seed, and the fruit-t7'ee yielding fruit after his kind, lohoseseed is in itself 
upon the earth : o,nd it was so. 

12 And the earth Ir ought forth grass, and herh yielding seed after his 
kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself"^ after his kind: 
and God saw that it was good. 

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day. 

The Professor took up the Bible and read tlie 
ninth and the following four verses, then said, "How 
shall we continue the discussion ? " 

I proposed w^e should go through the account, 
statement by statement ; inquire at each what does 
the science of to-day teach in reference to that par- 
ticular matter, and see w^iether there is agreement, 
or whether there is the contradiction which is by 
many so confidently claimed. 

The ninth verse teaches that what is now dry land 
was once under water. Is that true ? Was it so ? 

* In wliicli (fruit) is its (the tree's) seed — that is, fruit-tree wliose 
seed is in its fruit. See Dr. Conant's Genesis on this verse. 



OUR THIRD EVENING, 99 

^'Professor Dana says, ^ The envelope (of water) 
was nearly or quite universal/ or, as Professor Hux- 
ley puts it in liis New York lectures, ' all that is now 
dry land was once at the bottom of the sea.' The 
continents at first formed vast submarine plateaux 
lying some hundred feet, or possibly fathoms, beneath 
the surface '■ (Dana's Manual of Geology^ page 160). 

Then, so far as I can see, you must admit that 
this command, '' Let the waters be gathered unto one 
place, and let the dry land appear," stands in its true 
order, to wit, after the completed deposition of the 
waters once all suspended as vapor above the earth. 
Is there any error in this ? 

'^ No ; I cannot say that there is." 

I note, too, I continued, that the writer says, Let 
the waters be gathered unto one place, and it was so 
done. They were gathered unto one place. Is not 
that right according to geography ? Are not present 
oceans and seas really one body occupying one great 
depression in the earth's surface ; the different names 
being only for convenience to designate parts of one 
great whole ? 

''Yes. And I must say it is remarkable that a 
Hebrew, with the little geographical knowledge of 
his day, should have so written. There were three 
large bodies of water known to liim — the Mediterra- 
nean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf or Sea, and 
it is unlikely that he knew that they wx^re connected. 



100 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

It would liave been the most natural thing in the 
world, and from his stand-point the only right thing 
to say, ' Let the waters be gathered into not one place, 
but into their places.' Yes ; the account is right, and 
I must admit the fact is a very surprising one. 

."But, following these statements, there appears to 
be one of those blunders of which I spoke when you 
proposed this discussion, one which destroys all belief 
in the inspiration of the narrative. For you must 
admit that one falsehood as completely disproves all 
claim to a divine origin as if there were many. I 
refer to the sudden and abrupt character of the 
account. The writer says, or at least we are so told, 
that the dry land appeared instantly, or, at most, in a 
Error20. ''The few hours. God Said, 'Let the dry land 
dry land ap- appear ' and at once it rose all complete 

peared instant- i x ^ i 

ly-" above the waters, just as in Eastern tales 

when the magic name of Solomon is pronounced 
palaces rise in a night. Now every geologist knows 
that the appearing of the dry land was a very long 
process, beginning unnumbered ages in the past, 
and continuing through archsean, paleozoic, and 
mesozoic times, down through most of the tertiary, 
until its completion in the comparatively recent plio- 
cene. I say 'comparatively recent,' because it is 
very near this end of the geological record, but far 
enough distant for all that." 

Then this blunder, this fatal blunder, depends 



OUR THIRD EVENING. 101 

upqji whether Moses says the appearance of the dry 
lan^ was an instantaneous or an almost instantaneous 
act which immediately followed the fiat. Please 
show me where he says so. 

" You ask me to show you what no one supposes is 
in the account in so many words. But is it not fairly 
implied ? Moses does not say any thing about the 
process being a long one." 

True ; but not saying it is a very different matter 
from saying just the contrary. Nor can we justly 
draw any such inference from the mere juxtaposition 
of the command, and the account of its accomplish- 
ment. We admit this principle every-where else. 
Were I to say, '^Napoleon was banished to St. Helena, 
and there he died," could I, with any fairness, be 
charged with asserting that he died immediately or 
very soon after he arrived on that island ? Implication 
has its office, but that is not to prove any thing ; at 
most it is only suggestive, and needs to be tested in 
every possible manner. No ; the error of which you 
speak is not here. 

" But I heard a minister once preach from the text, 
' He spake, and it was done,' and to him it was proof 
positive that the creative work was done instantly — 
no delay whatever. 

" To me, of course, it proved nothing, as the Bible, 
in my estimation, is no more than any other good 
book; but to you, who profess to receive it as from 



102 GENESIS I AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

God, the case is different, and I do not see how you 
avoid the conclusion." 

We agreed to confine ourselves to the first twenty- 
seven verses of Genesis ; and as they were written 
hundreds of years before your text they are quite 
independent of it. I will say, however, that I see in 
it only obedience — prompt obedience, I admit; but 
that consists in at once beginning to obey. The act 
of obedience, in all cases, requires more or less time ; 
but neither tlie text quoted nor this story gives the 
slightest intimation as to how much time was re- 
quired in this instance. 

''If, as you insist, w^e are to hold to the letter of 
the account, I must of course admit that it does not 
say or necessarily imply that the uprising of the land 
was a short process, and I suppose I must withdraw 
my objection.^ 

* I add here some remarks in regard to the time when the conti- 
nents were completed, as they are necessary to a comprehension of 
tlie subject, and to meet objections which others who do not possess 
the Professor's knowledge of geology may advance. 

" In the tertiary there was (1) the finishing of the rocky substratum 
of the continents; (2) the expansion of the continental areas to their 
full extent, or their essentially permanent recovery from the waters 
of the ocean ; (3) the elevation of the great mountains of the globe, 
or a considerable portion of tliem, through a large portion of their 
height, as the Alps, the Pyrenees, Apennines, Himalayas, Andes, 
Rocky Mountains, the loftiest chains on tlie globe — a result not fully 
completed until the close of the tertiary " — that is, in the pliocene. 

The non-geological student will do well to study the above care- 
fully. It is taken from Dana's Manual of Geology, page 586, and is 
sufficient answer to any who may claim that the land could not prop- 



OUR THIRD EVENING. 108 

" But," continned the Professor, " what does 
' good ' mean here — ' and God saw that it was good ? ' 
It seems a misnomer if it refers to moral character." 

I have ah^eady said, when speaking of the flriiia- 
meiit and of hght, that things without souls can be 
good only in the sense of being tit or complete for 
some use or purpose. I take this to be the only 
meaning applicable to the water and the land. The 

erly be said to have been fully developed (or caused to appear) by 
the end of the tertiary, because large portions were afterward sub- 
merged and additions made to its area. It should be remembered 
that subsequent submergences were only temporary, the land com- 
ing up again essentially unchanged in its outlines and grand features. 
From these changes there resulted little more than a more convenient 
arrangement of the gravels, clays, and sands, and the deposition of a 
final coating of alluvium, which enriched and ultimately beautified 
the earth. As to the additions to the area of the continents since the 
pliocene — the end of the tertiary — they consist mainly of deltas, or 
of such increase as came from local coast elevations. All combined 
are inappreciable in comparison with the broad extent of the land at 
tlie close of that period. 

Wliatever discrepancy may seem to exist between this and what 
has been said as to the completion of the land in the tertiary does not 
in the least affect the harmony of the Mosaic statements and the 
facts of geology. If any discrepancy seems to exist there, it arises 
from leaving the words of Moses, and using in their place certain in- 
ferences which we have drawn from them. He does not say that 
nothing further was done to the land, but only that the land and sea 
had then arrived at a condition which, in the eyes of the divine 
World-builder, was good, and certainly if the present arrangement 
is a good one — as physical geography says it is — that was. 

That certain finishing touches were fondly given by the Master's 
hand between this verdict and the time when the world was given 
to man is at least fairly intimated by the fact that then it received a 
higher meed of approval. It, with all the work of the creative 
periods, was pronounced " very good." 



104 GENESIS I AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

appropriateness of the term becomes apparent when we 
consider the condition of the earth at lirst and the 
changes subsequently undergone. The sea then covered 
all the earth. The waters, from the quantity of lime, 
silica, and other impurities held in solution, were poi- 
sonous to the higher forms of life which were ultimately 
to be produced. Not only was the land at first under 
water, but it was merely hardened lava. Soil needed 
to be produced. Internal forces began slowly to lift up 
the submerged continents. Myriads of tiny creatures 
set to work to remove the mineral matters ; marine 
vegetation began to take up the excess of carbonic acid 
and to throw back the oxygen, to make a better at- 
mosphere. The disintegration of the rocks by lichens 
and other plants, the pounding of the waves, the ac- 
tion of fire and other agencies, slowly reduced the 
hard lava to powder, the basis of all soil. This needed 
to be enriched by the lime taken from the sea and 
by carbonaceous matter from the decomposition of 
plants and animals. All these, worked over and over, 
resulted at last in a soil able to sustain the final de- 
velopment, the highest types of plants, toward which 
all vegetation tended. The land then was appropri- 
ately said to be good. The preparation of the seas 
went on with that of the land, till they attained a 
condition when modern types of fishes could live in 
them. They were then entitled to and embraced in 
the same verdict of " good." 



OUR THIRD EVENmO. 105 

Geologically, this seems to have been pretty well 
toward the end of the tertiary. 

'' Whatever," said the Professor, " may be the fact 
as to any contradiction thus far we are Error 21. The 
now coming to what seems to me a fatal order is wrong. 
one. I mean the order of these events. The com- 
pletion of the land and seas is said by this account to 
have preceded all kinds of plants, or, in other words, 
there were neither plants nor animals before the com- 
pletion of land and seas. Every tyro in geology 
knows tliat this is not true. There were plants and 
animals, too, ages upon ages before that." 

I knew the best way to meet his difficulty was to 
turn to the story itself, and let him see just what it 
says ; so I took up the Bible and read aloud : 

II And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding 
seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself 
upon the earth : and it was so. 

12 And the earth brought forth grass^ and herb yielding seed after his 
kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself^ after his hind: 
and God saw that it was good. 

13 And the evening o.nd the morning were the third day. 

Where, I asked, does Moses say that no plants or 
animals preceded these ? 

. " No ; it is not said in so many words, but he 
speaks of no earlier ones, and that seems to me about 
tlie same thing." 

* In which (fruit) is its (the tree's) seed — that is, fruit-tree wliose 
seed is in its fruit. See Dr. Conant's Genesis on this verse. 



106 GENESIS I AND MODERN SCmNCE, 

But silence is not denial. All that can be justly 
said is that Moses speaks of certain kinds of plants 
as coming after tlie completion of the land and seas. 
Now, is this true? Geologists say that the last great 
development — the cnhnination of plant-life — occurred 
in the latter part of the tertiary. It was then that 
the vegetation contemporaneous with Moses, and I 
may add with ourselves, made its appearance. I 
then took up De la Saporta's Ze Monde des Plantes 
and read on page 380 : '^ The vegetable kingdom ac- 
quired its characteristic traits long before the animal 
liad completed its own ; so that, probably before the 
end of the tertiary, the principal groups, and even the 
genera that compose them, the vast majority of our 
actual flora, were established in the limits which they 
now occupy." 

Plant-life did, indeed, begin millions of years 
earlier, but present genera began very late in geolog- 
ical time. The question, then, turns on this. What 
vegetation did the author of this story have in mind? 
Was it the almost structureless sea-weeds which for 
many ages were the only plants ? Is it not beyond all 
reasonable doubt that he intended to speak of the vege- 
tation in existence when the story was given ? Moses 
knew of no other, and if, for some reason, God wished 
to tell of the plants which he made at the dawn of life, 
he knew too much to call them " grasses, herbs, and 
fruit-trees bearing fruit whose seed is inside of it." 



OUR THIRD EVENING. 107 

Taking, then, the storj to mean just what it says, 
the difScultj vanishes, the order is all right. But 
the difficulty re-appears when we leave the words of 
Moses, and, in order to sustain certain preconceived 
notions of our own, make the plants he names mean 
sea-weeds. What right have we to take such a lib- 
erty ? 

To this the Professor made no reply except that 
"this was not the Genesis that he had heard so much 
about. He had always understood that it told of the 
creation of all plants from the very first, and, of 
course, that verses 11 and 12 were meant to describe 
not the flora of to-day, but that in which plant-life 
began. If such really is the meaning it teaches se- 
rious error ; this new way of taking the words to 
mean simply what they say seems to dispose of objec- 
tions in an extraordinary and unceren:ionious manner. 
But there is," he added, " what seemed to him an error 
in the order of this and tlie next period which a mod- 
erate knowledge of vegetable chemistry ^.ttot^. The 
would have prevented. Moses places that order wrong, 
highly organized flora before the creation of the sun. 

" We know, what he did not, that such vegetation 
could not exist without the sun, and yet he puts it in 
the third period, and the creation of the sun in the 
fourth — the sun after the plants ! There can be no 
question that here is an error of great importance, 
showing ignorance of a vital law of plant existence." 



108 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

I suggested that before condemning Moses we 
should see whether it was he that said the sun was 
made so late, or whether his words had been misun- 
derstood and misinterpreted under the influence of a 
false science. As this would require too much time 
for the present evening we would defer it till the next. 
So we dropped it for the present. 



UR FO URTH EVENING. 1 09 



OUR FOURTH EVENING. 



OUR theme: what was DOXE IX THE FOURTH PERIOD, 

Genesis i, 14-19. 

14 And God said, Let there he lights in the firmament of the heaven 
to divide the day from the night. 15 And let them he for signs, and for 
seasons, and for days and years : and let them he for lights in the fir - 
mament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth. And it was so. 

[That is, the transaction was completed, the fiat was obeyed, and 
all the things commanded were done.] 

16 And God made tiuo great lights ; the greater light to rule the day, 
and the lesser light to rule the night : he made the stars also. 17 And 
God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earf/i, 
18 And to ride over the day and over the night, and to divide the light 
from the darkness : and God saw that it was good. 

1 9 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. 

The above, except as to the division into para- 
graphs, is the commou version. For reasons which I 
shall give in the course of the discussion I ofier the 
following as nearer to the Hebrew. 

Yerses 14, 15. And God said : " Let the lights in 
the expanse of heaven divide between the day and 
the night ; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, 
and for days and years ; and let them be for lights 
in the expanse of heaven to give light upon the 
earth." And it was so. [The things commanded 
were done.] 

Verses 16, 17, 18. (And God made the two great 
lights ; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser 



110 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

light to rule tlie niglit : he made the stars also. And 
God set them in the expanse of heaven to give light 
upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the 
niglit, and to divide between the light and the dark- 
ness.) And God saw that it was good. 

Verse 19. And 'twas evening and 'twas morning, 
the fourth day. 



It was several days before the Professor came to 
see me. He seemed eager to continue the discussion, 
for he had scarcely taken his seat before he said : 
'^ My difficulties are not yet all removed. In fact, we 
are coming to the greatest of all. It seems to me that 
Moses commits a gross error in verses 14 and 15,"^ 
w^here he says, ' Let there be lights in the firmament 
of heaven to divide ' etc. He represents 

Objection 23. ' ^ 

Says sun and the suu and moon as made after the dry 

moon were 

made after land had appeared and liad brought forth 
'^^^^' the very highest orders of vegetation — 

fruit-trees — and even after they had been pronounced 
completed. Or, to state the matter geologically, Mo- 
ses says these luminaries were formed later at least 
than the cretaceous, if not after the tertiary, l^ow, 
every body knows that they had been in existence long 
before this, and had been shining for untold ages as 
brightly as now, and that all along there had been 

* The reader will remember that it is the common version of which 
the Professor is speaking. 



UR FO URTH E VENING. Ill 

days and nights, and that then, as now, the earth had 
revolved around the sun in a little more than three 
hundred and sixty-iive daj'S. I cannot believe Moses 
inspired, or he would not have made this mistake." 

As for this whole matter of the work of the fourth 
period, I replied, whatever it was, it involves so many 
questions pertaining, some to philology, but mostly to 
physical science, that an exhaustive consideration is at 
present impossible. T think, however, that the special 
difficulty to which you refer has no real existence. 

The common version, " Let there be lights," is a 
creative fiat, and, if it be the only fair rendering of 
the Hebrew, involves the account in the difficulties 
of which you speak. It has been suggested as an ex- 
planation that the earth up to this time had been 
wrapped in persistent clouds so dense as to hide sun, 
moon, and stars, and that the command was directed 
merely to the dispersion of these clouds. 

This solution of the difficulty is looked upon by many 
as only a make-shift, and I confess it seems so to me. 
For if the clouds had slmt out all light there would 
indeed have been no days or nights or seasons; but 
this would leave the previous three days unaccounted 
for, and it does violence to the laws of such plant life 
as Moses describes ; for seed-yielding herbs and fruit- 
trees require sunlight. On the other hand, if enough 
solar rays came through the clouds to sustain such a 

vegetation, then, although the sun might be invisible, 
8 



112 GENESIS I AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

as now in a cloudy day, there would have been days 
and nights ; and the existence of seasons would have 
been indicated by the varying length of the days. 

And besides this, a mere breaking away of clouds, 
permitting the face of the sun and moon to be 
seen, when their light had for millions of years been 
pouring down in quantities amply sufficient for the 
needs of a most abundant and luxuriant vegetable and 
animal life, seems but a meager fulfillment of expec- 
tations excited by such a fiat as, Let there be lights 
in the firmament of heaven. 

Tlie kind of science which, to avoid difficulty, says 
that up to this time days and nights had no definite 
limits is to me so incomprehensible that I cannot 
deem it worthy of serious notice. If the earth's axial 
motion was uniform (and no one supposes it was not), 
and if light obeyed the same laws as at present, the 
"limits" of the days must have been as definite then 
as now. 

Another theory finds favor with some who protest 
against applying to this account the science of the 
nineteenth century."^ They imagine that luminous 
matter in the earlier days was gathered around the 
earth, until the fourth period, and then the sun, Avhich 

■^I notice that those who protest against applying the science of 
the nineteenth century to this account apply it themselves, just as 
far as they ihink tliey can do so with safety. If it were not painful 
it would be amusing to see the efforts some of them make in this 
direction. 



OUR FOURTH EVENING, 113 

previously had existed as an opaque body, became 
luminous, and at the same time the liglit-giving mat- 
ter left our planet and went to the sun, or in some 
other way w^as disposed of. 

To this no other answer need be given than tliat the 
luminous matter owes its luminosity to its intense 
heat. Such a covering about the earth would have 
rendered life impossible. 

Lastly, there are those that say the refractive power 
of the atmosphere was in some way so increased that 
the solar rays were bent to such a degree that the side 
of the earth away from the sun was illuminated almost 
as much as the side toward it. This requires no 
other answer than that no such refraction was pos- 
sible without a chano-e in the laws of lidit. 

Apart from any other objection to such an explana- 
tion, it is useless for the purpose for wliich it was de- 
vised. It does not remove the difficulties, for it pro- 
vides only for a perpetual day, while the account 
speaks explicitly of day and night, and of evening 
and morning. 

With these and all similar explanations, I, for one, 
am dissatisfied, because they have no foundation in 
facts, and because, w^liile accepting the common ver- 
sion, they seem to force its meaning, or, at least, to 
belittle its natural import beyond the limits of a fair 
exegesis. 

Pondering long upon the words of Moses and the 



114 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

facts of our world's history as I had learned them 
from astronomy and geology, I arrived, at last, at 
another explanation, which, so far as I can see, does 
violence to neither. The method by which I arrived 
at it, and the explanation itself, I will, as briefly and 
clearly as I can, now lay before yon. 

I first souglit to know just wliat it was that Moses 
said. This, of course, was a question for the gram- 
mar and lexicon, and if you will follow me as I again 
go over the ground you w^ill, I think, be better pre- 
pared to compare liis statements with the facts in our 
world's history which science has made known. 

Turning to my Hebrew Bible, I note the absence 
of any word corresponding to " there" in the sentence 
which is rendered, " Let there be lights," etc. The 
translators placed it in onr version because, with the 
views in relation to the creation of the sun and moon 
which they held in common with all the world in 
their day, they thought Moses of course intended to 
say that these bodies were actually made at that late date. 
" Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven " can 
hardly be forced to mean any thing less than their 
creation. But if " there " be omitted, the creative 
sense almost disappears. It quite vanislies when we 
use in the English the future tense — in which the He- 
brew verb really is ; then it reads, " And God said, 
The lights in the firmament of heaven shall be for" 
certain offices. 



UR FO URTH E VENING. 1 1 5 

This is an important change. It will help ns to 
see the rightfulness of it if we make the same render- 
ing in each of the other iiats — that is, if we translate 
in the future tense — and observe that it makes no 
change in their meaning. I will give each instance, 
keeping the exact order of the Hebrew words, except 
tliat our idiom requires the verb to be placed after its 
subject, while the other generally requires the opposite. 
We say, "In the beginning God ci'eated the heaven 
and the earth," while the Hebrew says, " In the begin- 
ning created God the heaven and the earth." The 
future tense being used, the fiats will read as follows : 

'' And God said, Light shall be — 

" And God said, A firmament shall be — 

" The waters under the heaven shall be gathered 
unto one place, and the dry land shall appear — 

" The earth shall bring forth grass — 

" The lights in the firmament of heaven shall be 
for — 

" They shall be for signs and seasons — 

'' They shall be for lights — 

" The water shall bring forth — 

"The earth shall bring forth—" 

A careful examination will show no change in the 
sense from the common version, except in the fourth 
period. You will notice in the ninth verse it reads, 
"And God said. Let the waters under the heaven be 
gathered unto one place." In the Hebrew the words 



116 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

''under the heaven " follow "waters ; " they qualify 
the latter — that is, tell what waters are meant. The 
same order is found in the 14tli verse; it is literally, 
the " lights in the firmament of heaven." Hence, 
if w^e keep the order of the original, w^e should say, 
'• the lights in the firmament of heaven," as I have 
given in the proposed version. 

It appears, therefore, that the fiat was a command 
to bodies already in existence to do certain things, as 
in the third, fifth, and sixth periods. 

But that is not all. There is in this verse a pecul- 
iar Hebrew idiom, the recognition of ^vhich sheds 
further light on the meaning of the command. Be- 
fore the word rendered " to divide " there is placed 
the preposition lahmed. The lexicons say that the 
verb "to be," followed by lahmed before an infinitive, 
is often merely a periphrase for the simple vei'b. Ge- 
seiiius says it forms in many places a periphrase for 
the future; for example. Gen. xv, 12, "When the sun 
was going down," or, rather, " When the sun was 
about to go down," or, as given in the Cathollcuin 
Lexicon^ " Soleil allait se coucher!^^ So also Josh, 
xi, 5. Samuel Lee says the same. So, too, in Fuerst's 
Lexicon. The CathoUcuvi Lexicon saj^s lahmed^ with 
the verb " to be " before the infinitive, is the same as 
in English "/ am to play ;^'' or, in French, "Al^er 
faire telle chose — I am going to do a certain thing." 

In accordance with this principle the fiat reads 



UR FO URTE E VENING. 1 1 7 

thus : ^*' And God said, Let the liglits in the firmament 
of heaven henceforth divide between ^ the day and 

* More ilian two years after the above was written I came across 
Roseiiraliller's exposition of the fourieenth verse, quoted by Dr. 
Clialmers in liis Natural Thtology^ vol. i, page 253. I give it with a 
slight change — not in the sense, but to make it clearer. 

Speaking of this verse the great German commentator says: "If 
any one conversant with tlie genius of tlie Hebrew, and free from 
previous bias, will read the words in their natural connection, he 
will immediately perceive that they import a direction or determina- 
tion of the heavenly bodies to certain uses. The words yehte meo- 
rotli are not to be rendered fia.nt luminaria^ Id tliere he lights — that is, 
let lights he made; but ratlier, let lights he — that is, serve {inserviant) — 
in the expanse of lieaven for distinguishing hetioeen day and night, and let 
them he, or serve, for signs and for seasons, etc. For we are to observe 
that the word havah, ' to be,' in connection with tlie prefix lahmtd, 
* for,' is generally employed to express the direction or determination 
of a thing to an end, and not its production." 

I interrupt the quotation to ask the reader to apply Rosenmiiller's 
remark to cases where, as in the text, the lahmed is placed before a 
verb. In such a case the thing toward which the fiat is directed, or 
determined, is the verb itself; and hence, as I have pointed out, it 
becomes onl}' a periphrase for the simple verb in the future. 

Rosenmiiller goes on : "But the difference between yeliee and ihe 
plural veyahee, in the fourteenth verse, demands a corresponding dif- 
ference in their translation; and, therefore, if we would make that 
difference apparent, we must literall}^ interpret thus: Fiat luminaria 
infirmamento cceli ad dividendum inter diem et nodem, ut slut in signa, 
et tempora, etc., or, in our language. Let it be that the lights in the 
firmament of heaven, for.dividing between the day and the night, be 
for signs and for seasons, etc.'^ 

It will be seen that Rosenmuller, on purely grammatical grounds, 
sustains fully the great point that a creative sense ought not to at- 
tach to the command in this verse. The rendering which I have 
given — Let the lights in the firmament of heaven divide between the 
day and the night, and let them be for siuns, etc. — seems to me to be 
even closer to the Hebrew idiom, and, moreover, it reqiiires no strain- 
ing the text nor forcing the conjunction vav (and) into " that," as 
does the translation adopted by Rosenmiiller. 



118 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

the night." I insert tlie word " henceforth " to em- 
}3liasize tlie future meaning. Thej^ are to do {aller 
fairs) this thing. 

If I am right in this rendering, whicli seems closer 
to the original tlian does the common version, your 
objection, that Moses puts tlie creation of the sun 
too late, vanishes, for this is not a creative fiat but 
merely a command to bodies already in existence to 
do certain things. 

" To this," said the Professor, '' I have two objec- 
tions. Dividing between* the day and the night was 
nothing new ; for if, as you say, there had been a sun 
for ages, and there had been days and nights, the sun 
divided between them tlien as much as now ; hence, 
on your rendering, there was nothing done in response 
to the fiat. This seems to be absurd. 

'• Secondly, you place the article *' the ' before the 
word ' lights.' You say, ' Let the lights.' The article 
does not occur in the Hebrew. What right have you 
to do that?" 

With your permission I will reply to your second 
objection first, deferring the other until we have dis- 
cussed some preliminary matters, and come to con- 
sider what it was that the lights were commanded 
to do. 

As to my right to insert the article, I hardly 
expected a college professor to ask that question. I 

* " Between " is the marginal read'iig, and is literal. 



OUR FOURTH EVENING. 119 

will say, then, that I have the same right to insert it, 
or omit it, that King James's translators had. They 
placed it before firmament in this very clause, and 
elsewhere in this chapter have inserted it where it 
was not, or omitted it where it was, more than fifty 
times. Nor is this any thing strange or unusual ; it 
is always done when translating from one language 
into another. We are therefore at liberty to insert 
or omit it here, in harmony with the idiom of the 
language, and in such a manner as best to bring out 
that meaning which is in accordance with all the 
facts. 

But really the presence or absence of the article 
proves nothing as to these bodies having been al- 
ready in existence. It occurs in the first verse before 
"heaven" and ''earth," which had not been spoken 
of, and w^hich certainly had not previously existed, 
and in the next verse it is omitted before '' Spirit," 
about whose previous existence there can be no ques- 
tion. 

As to your remark that if the " lights " were not 
made at this time, then nothing w^as done in obedi- 
ence to the fiat, I think that what was done was 
a change in the inclination of the earth's axis from 
being ahnost or quite perpendicular to the ecliptic 
to its present obliquity ; not, please remember, a 
change in the position of the axis in the earth itself, 
thereby altering latitudes, but one which did not 



120 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

affect the geographical position of the poles. Such a 
change would be of immense importance not only as 
making the sun and moon time measurers, since it in- 
troduced seasons and unequal days and nights, but it 
greatly increased the area of inhabitability. For if 
the axis were now perpendicular to the ecliptic the 
sun would remain all the year where it is now on the 
twenty-first day of March ; consequently no vegetation 
could come to maturity, say, from the middle of the 
United States northward, nor anywhere in Europe 
save perhaps a little on the Mediterranean, nor in all 
Asia from the northern line of Hindustan. Sub- 
stantially the same condition would exist in the 
southern hemisphere. Perpetual snow and ice would 
come down far tow^ard this line. In such conditions 
snow once deposited would never melt. 

The area from which the snow now never disap- 
pears is but a few millions of miles ; it would then 
be nearly thirty millions. It w^ould be moderate to 
say that one half of the present inhabitable area of 
our earth would have remained desolate forever. 

Such an increase of obliquity deserves a special 
fiat, since, like the inti'oduction of plants and animals, 
it cannot be accounted for by any force known to 
science. It, too, must be referred to the divine will. 

The Professor replied, " It is easy to say such an 
increase took place, but to be of any value the as- 
sertion must rest on facts." 



OUR FOURTH EVENING. 121 

True, I replied, but we must look for the evidence, 
not in disturbances of the strata, but in tlie plant and 
animal life of those early times. For a change in the 
obliquity of the earth, if gradual, occupying, for ex- 
ample, a few months, would not produce any per- 
ceptible derangement of the land or water. But in- 
stead of days and nights at the poles each twelve 
hours long, there would be ever afterward six months 
of constant sunshine followed by six months of con- 
stant darkness. We should therefore look for cor- 
responding changes in the plants and animals, and 
we find them. 

It is a well-known fact that from the dawn of life 
to the middle of the tertiary, or later, organic forms 
in all latitudes w^ere not only similar, but in most 
cases actually the same; hence we may reasonably 
infer, at least as to plants, since they could not 
migrate with changing seasons, that the life-condi- 
tions were the same from the equator to the poles. 

Besides food, only temperature and light affect 
plants. Which is the more important it is difficult 
to say. 

Temperature might have been modified in various 
ways, but it is difficult to see how it could have l)een 
made even tolerably uniform, say, in latitude 80 de- 
grees, for example, in Spitzbergen, if the heat of the 
sun was wholly cut off for four months of the year, 
and then for another four months beat down without 



122 GENESIS J. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

cessation, as must have been the case in those days if 
the axis of the earth was inclined then as now. 

But admitting that in some way the July heat of 
Spitzbergen was so modified, and the January cold 
so reduced, that but little differeuce remained"^ — al- 
though this seems impossible — there remains the far 
more difficult problem of the action of the solar rays 
on plants. In no way could this be afi^ected except 
by a change in the axial inclination. Only a perpen- 
dicnlar axis could cause identity in the amount and 
mode of distribution of the actinic force, say in Spitz- 
bergen and Florida. Hence, if there is any thing in 
the modern doctrine of the influence of environment, 
the florae of high and low latitudes, if the axis M-as 
inclined 23^- degrees, should have been different. 
The converse is true. The identity of the florae 
proves identity of life-affecting forces — hence of 
actinic rays ; hence a perpendicular axis.f 

The sameness in plants and animals of all latitudes 
extends past the middle of the tertiary. After the 
tertiary a remarkable change occurred in the climate 
of the world ; what is called the glacial epoch set in, 

* The equalizing influence of the ocean is very great, but, whatever 
it wap, it could not prevent differences between summer and winter 
temperature in Spitzbergen, which, it would seem, must have betn 
great enough to destroy the magnolias and other tender vegetation 
which we know abounded there in the ages of geology. 

f Dana, Manual of Geology^ says tliat there is no evidence of zones of 
climate in any of the earlier geological periods. The evidence of the 
absence of such zones is overwhelming. 



UR FO XJRTH E YEN IN G. 1 23 

and all high latitude regions were covered with ice 
and snow. Ever since that time of cold passed away 
there is ample evidence of changing seasons, and 
hence of axial obliquity. 

To sum up : the sameness of plant-species before 
the middle of the tertiary indicates a sameness in the 
life-conditions incompatible with months of contin- 
uous darkness followed by months of continuous 
light ; after the latter part of the tertiary a very re- 
markable change occurred; and thenceforward life- 
conditions were such as now exist. From the study 
of fossil botany we learn that the glacial epoch came 
after the introduction of modern plants. We can 
reconcile the record before and after that event only 
on the theory that what occurred was a great change 
in the inclination of the earth's axis. 

" To such an increase," said the Professor, " two ob- 
jections now occur to me. All the forces in the solar 
system affecting the position of the axis are compen- 
sative, so that any change in the obliquity would, at 
most, be but small (1^ degrees or so, as shown by La- 
place and by Mr. Stockwell) and of comparatively 
brief duration. And if in some way you can get by 
that. Dr. Croll says that if the axis had been perpen- 
dicular to the ecliptic, the polar climate would have 
been in consequence less genial than at present. Cer- 
tainly it can be mathematically shown that in such a 
case the arctic regions would receive a less number of 



124 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

solar rajs than they do now ;"^ whereas, in fact, they 
were very much warmer. These two facts seem to 
me to make pretty thorough work of your theory." 

It is doubtless true that no force known to science 
could permanently change the obliquity of the earth's 
axis. But this is irrelevant, for somehow and at some 
time the axis, which, on any purely mechanical theory 
of formation from nebulous matter, ought to be per- 
pendicular to the ecliptic, is inclined 23|- degrees.f 
Tlmt it once really was nearly perpendicular seems 
indicated, not merely by the laws of mechanics, but 
by the fact that the moon's axis is nearly in that 
position now, its obliquity being only 1 degree 30 
minutes and 10 seconds, and originally their axes, on 
such a theory, must have been parallel. 

The burden of proof lies on those who, claiming a 
merely mechanical system evolved from nebulous 
matter by physical law, deny a change of obliquity. 
However great the .difficulty of showing a sufficient 
cause for the change, it does not concern him wlm 
attempts to explain this account. I have now to do 

* There can, I tliink, be no doubt that Dr. Croll is right in this. 
See Meech's paper "On the Relative Intensity of Heat and Light of 
the Sun at Different Latitudes,'' in the Smithsonian ContjHbuiions to 
Knowledge. 

f There arc many facts which no force known to science can ex- 
plain. There is the existence of matter, of force, of plants, of ani- 
mals, of mind. All these, like the increase of the earth's obliquity, 
can be explained only by considering them as the result of a divine 
volition. 



OUR FOURTH EVENING, 125 

only with the fact, patent to all, that at some time 
the earth's axis became inclined 23| degrees, and, if 
possible, to discover when it occurred — a question of 
dates only. You will, of course, admit that up to that 
time, whenever it was, there was no alternation of 
seasons, and that the days in all latitudes were of equal 
length, being every-where twelve hours long.^ Con- 
sequently, if in some way sufficient warmth was sup- 
plied in high latitudes we should justly expect to find 
similar, and even identical, species of plants flourishing 
every-where. But after that great event there would 
be, in Spitzbergen and on that parallel from that time 
onward, winter nights and summer days four months 
long, while in Florida days and nights would scarcely 
change at all. In high latitudes all plants adapted to the 
previous conditions would die out, and in their places 
would arise new species fitted for the different state 
of things ; f while in low latitudes the vegetation would 
be unaffected, and the same plants might be expected 
to continue to the present day. 

It is wonderful how this agrees with the world's 
actual history. In the ages before a certain time — 

*If the earth's axis was then incHned the same as the moon's 
is now, there was a very small variation in the length of the days, 
but too small to admit of anj" climatic or actinic value whatever. 

f Present arctic plants are wholly different from those of, for ex- 
ample, the Miocene. The change of chmate in those regions was fol- 
lowed by " a new set of plants whose seeds had never been there 
or in that neighborhood," nor, I may add, anywhere else. 



126 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

the glacial epoch — the same plants grew in Spitzbergen 
and in Florida. To-day not one of those species lives 
within many hundred miles of Spitzbergen or other 
arctic regions, where they once flourished, as Lyell says, 
" with the greatest luxuriance ; " while their descend- 
ants are yet found in Florida and similar localities, 

" However true," said the Professor, " this may all be 
— and I must confess it is based on well-established facts 
— yet unless you can dispose of my other objection your 
argument is thrown away. A perpendicular axis which 
made the polar climate less genial than at present 
would seem to be disproved by the very fact which 
you deem so important, namely, that warm-climate 
plants did actually grow far beyond the arctic circle." 

It is true that a smaller number of solar rays than at 
present Avould be received during the year at the poles 
if the axis were perpendicular. But the conclusion 
which Dr. Croll draws from this fact — that the climate 
would be less genial — will hold good only on condition 
that temperature is proportional to the number of rays 
received. This is by no means the case. Proof abounds. 

High lands are cooler than low lands. Yet, on 
equal surfaces, the former receive as many or more 
solar rays than the latter. So, too, men in a balloon 
have almost perished with cold while people on the 
ground beneath them have been oppressed wdth heat. 
Temperature depends far more upon the amount of 
heat retained than upon the amount received; and, 



OUR FOURTH EVENING. 127 

therefore, if it could be shown that in those earlier 
days the heat in high latitudes was in some wa)^ re- 
tained, the mild temperature would be accounted for, 
and your objection would fall to the ground. You 
have doubtless read Professor Tyndall's beautiful 
experiments on the absorbing power of gases and 
vapors in his Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion, 
He has shown that carbonic acid and aqueous vapor, 
as well as many other gases and vapors, have the 
power of permitting solar heat to pass to the earth's 
surface while retaining the heat from the latter, just 
as the glass in a green-liouse permits the solar rays to 
enter, but does not allow those radiated from the in- 
terior to escape. In this law is found, I think, the 
solution of the mystery of the warm arctic temper- 
ature. The atmosphere in tliose days was rich in 
carbonic acid and aqueous vapor ; and hence, like a 
warm blanket covering the earth, retained the heat 
which the surface received.^ 

*Some geologists deoy the existence of any such greater amount 
of carbonic acid than is now found in the atmosphere, because it 
would, as they think, have rendered hfe impossible, and we know 
that life was abundant. Without going at any length into the dis- 
cussion I will only quote the words of Professor Ira Remsen, of Johns 
Hopkins University, in Popular Science Monthly, page 218, 1879: 
*'It has long since been proved, beyond possibihty of doubt, that the 
amount of this gas, when mixed with pure air, may be increased to 
one twentieth of the volume of the air" — more than one hundred and 
fifty times its present proportion — "without producing any serious 
effect upon those who breathe the air thus contaminated." 

This would be ample to give the "warm blanket" required. 
9 



128 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

For these and for other reasons which I have set 
forth in fnll elsewhere * it appears to me that a per- 
pendicular axis with an atmosphere rich in carbonic 
acid and aqueous vapor would account for the uni- 
formity in life-conditions which characterized those 
early times. 

"It would seem so; but there is a fact in geology 
which appears to prove that long before the glacial 
epoch there were summers and winters, and hence 
the earth's axis must have inclined as at present. 
Exogenous trees flourished and formed growth-rings, 
I do not know how far back, but many thousand 
years before the glacial time. Now, every body sup- 
poses that those rings mark the growth in summer 
and the rest in winter. If so, then your case fails." 

That is the belief of botanists; but it is only a 
belief, and is not founded on facts. I have had occa- 
sion to examine into the connection between these 
growth-rings and the seasons, and have embodied my 
conclusions, with the facts on which they rest, in an 
article entitled, " Is the Existence of Growth- Rings in 
the Early Exogenous Plants Proof of Alternating 
Seasons?" {^American Journal of Science^ 1878, Art. 
xlv.) I there showed that many exogens between the 
tropics, where there is no cold season, form such rings. 

* "The Three Climates of Geology," Penn Monthly for June, July, 
and August, 1880; also, "Geological Climates," in Popular Science 
Monthly for July, 1886. 



OUR FOURTH EVE-NING. 129 

*' But they have wet and dry seasons which pro- 
duce the same effect as a change from hot to cold. 
And these wet and dry seasons depend on the inclina- 
tion of the earth's axis." 

At first I thought as you do, but I soon found 
other facts. The mangrove, a tropical tree growing 
in the edge of the sea, and constantly washed by its 
waves, forms these rings as regularly and distinctly as 
does the oak or pine. In this case there is no possi- 
ble influence arising from the inclination of the earth's 
axis. I observed, also, that orange and lemon trees 
form annual rings, although, being in this climate kept 
in green-houses, they do not feel the change of seasons ; 
and that cycads form rings only once in two or three 
years, while at least one plant (tlie Chenojpodium 
albumin) forms many rings — in one case wliich I have 
seen, fourteen — in a single summer. And lastly, to 
show how purely accidental is the connection between 
seasons and rings, certain exogens growing even in 
this latitude form none. 

These facts prove that growth-rings would have 
been formed whether tliere were seasons or not, being 
due to certain cycles of growth and rest, implanted in 
tlie nature of plants."^ 

* Those who wish to see what geologists say about ancient chmates 
and the distribution of plants and animals may read the followmg 
fi'om Dana's Manual of Otology^ revised edition, page 181 : "There is 
wanting all evidence of a diversity of zones of climate over the earth's 
surface" in the lower Silurian. Page 209: "No proof" of the same 



180 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

The more I reflect upon this matter the clearer 
grows my conviction that an increase in the obliquity 
of the axis did occur at or near the end of tlie ter- 
tiary. But if I am mistaken, then what Moses says 
in verses 14 and 15 merely waits for its explanation 
until our knowledge becomes more nearly perfect, and 
we must content ourselves with the suggestive fact 
that between the production of present plants and 
that of present water vertebrates and birds there did 
really occur a most remarkable climatic change. 
Without further discussion I shall for the present 
assume that the axis of the earth did increase its ob- 
liquity from some small angle — probably 1\ degrees — 
to 231 degrees, and on tliis, as a real, or if you please 
assumed, fact, continue my exposition of these verses. 
But it will be better to wait until another evening, as 
w^e shall not be able to finish the consideration of this 
period in one and perhaps not in two evenings. 

After a little talk we fixed upon tlie next Wednes- 
day evening for our purpose, and so we adjourned. 

"ill the Trenton period as far as jQi studied." "The mild tempera- 
ture of the arctic region is evident." Page 266: "The identitj^ of 
species between arctic lands and Europe and America favors an 
approximate identity of character; and there is no sufficient evi- 
dence of any cold arctic or any wide diversity of zone " in the 
early Devonian. I might multiply such quotations indefinitely. 
Those who would look further may turn to pages 352, 587, 321, 403, 
497, 514, 515, etc. As to continental elevation and completion, see 
pages 524, 525, 526, etc. In fact, all the book, in reference to climate, 
plant-hfe, and animals, bears evidence to the truth of what I have 
been saying. 



OUR FIFTH EVENING, ISl 



OUR FIFTH EVENING. 



THE FOURTH PERIOD COXTIIS^UED. 

After the usual greetings, the Professor asked ixie 
to go on with my exposition. He held a copy of the 
Bible in his hand, and at my request read aloud the 
verses relating to tlie work of the fourth period. 

The '^hghts," I began, were commanded to divide 
between the day and the night ; they were to be for 
signs and for seasons and for days and years, and were 
to give light upon the earth — three impoi'tant offices. 

As to the first, how or what were they to divide 
between the day and the night ? Certainly they were 
not to divide in the sense of separating the day from 
the night. That, according to tlie fourth verse, was 
done in the first period. And, besides, such a mean- 
ing is, in the nature of the case, inapplicable to lumi- 
nous bodies. Nor do these lights serve to distinguish 
between the day and the night, as, if otherwise, we 
might mistake the one for the other. Either of these 
meanings would be absurd, and hence I conclude 
that neither was intended. 

It is common to use the word " divide " in the 
sense of allotting or meting out, as when we say a 
father divides his property among his sons. If divide 



132 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

be taken in this sense, then the meaning is : Let the 
lights in the firmament of heaven divide the time of 
a diurnal revolution between the day and the night ; 
that is, let them allot to each its length. 

To divide is also used in the sense of making a 
difference. For example, in Lev. xi, 46, 47, we read, 
" This is the law^ of the beasts, ... to make a difference 
between clean and unclean." The lights in the firma- 
ment of heaven were liencef orth to " make a differ- 
ence " between the day and the night. Nothing is 
intimated as to what the difference was to be. Evi- 
dently it does not refer to the day being light and 
the night dark, for, in the fifth verse, the writer had 
already said that the light w^as called day and the 
darkness was called night. The only other difference 
is that which now exists, namely, a difference in 
length. In that sense his words become fairly lumi- 
nous in view of the fact that till after the modern 
flora had made its appearance — that is, after the third 
Mosaic period — the days and nights had been equal 
all through the year, but that ever since the increase 
in the obliquity of the earth's axis there has been un- 
ceasing variation in their length as the sun journeys 
north and south. As to the moon, there is even more 
variation in the time it lights the night. 

"If," said the Professor, "such an increase of in- 
clination did really occur, its effects would be such as 
yon have said, for w^iile it would not affect in the 



OUR FIFTH EVENING. 183 

least the length of a diurnal revolution it would the 
length of the days and nights. Bat how were the 
' lights ' to be for signs ? " 

It may be that .by ''signs" Moses had reference to 
the means of determining the times of the Jewish 
festivals, which, as you know, were governed by the 
full moon in connection with the vernal equinox ; or 
perhaps, in a broader and, as it seems to me, a better 
sense, the lights were to be for signs by which to 
measure time in general. If the earth's axis had re- 
mained perpendicular there would have been notliing 
to distinguish one full moon from another — no fixed 
point to count from — si"nce there would have been 
neither spring nor other season. And, even if it was 
inclined a little — say 1|- degrees — the change of sea- 
sons would have been so small as to have been imper- 
ceptible, and hence of no use as a time measure. For 
the same reason the year would never have become 
a common measure of time ; for without alternating 
seasons there would have been nothing to suggest it, 
except to astronomers. There was, therefore, great 
propriety in speaking of the lights being for signs 
and for seasons and for days and years, as, in an im- 
portant sense, a new office for these bodies. 

"But," said the Professor, "are you not giving 
that word ' season ' a sense which does not 

Objection 24. 

properly belong to it? Do we not read 
elsewhere that the moon is appointed for seasons? 



184 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

and, if so, how can tlie word mean what we now call 
seasons ? " 

The Hebrew word is very like its English synonym. 
It has refei'ence to seasons of all kinds — seasons for 
sowing, seasons for reaping, seasons for religious 
ceremonies, etc. All these, so far as they are a meas- 
ure of time, are estabhshed by the obliquity of the 
eartli's axis, or, in other words, they count from the 
vernal equinox, without which they either would not 
exist at all or else would have no fixed point from 
which to be computed. Seasons, therefore, even 
when the psalmist says the '' moon was appointed for 
seasons " (Psa. cxiv, 19), were directly or indirectly 
dependent upon the inclination of the earth's axis. 

But now I wish to call attention to what seems an 
inexplicable omission on any theory other than that 
which attributes to the author of this account a 
knowledo-e of the true relation of the sun and moon 
to the eartli. He speaks of seasons, days, and years, 
but of months — next to days by far the most natural 
division of time — he says nothing whatever; nor of 
weeks, the institution of which was to the Hebrews, 
and to Moses above all others, since he was the law- 
giver of his nation, a matter of the greatest impor- 
tance."^ They had a word clearly and unmistakably 

* It is interesting as showin,2: the lack of real agreement between 
the Bible and the "Chaldean Genesis" to observe that in tlie latter 
nonths are the measurement of time by far the most prominently 
mentioned. 



UR FIFTH E YENING. 1 35 

meaning tlie time of a lunar revolution — a lunar 
month — yet Moses omits it. Tliink you it was by 
accident that he named each division of time in any 
way related to the position of the earth's axis, or ccf- 
fected directly or indirectly by an increase of its in- 
clination, and omitted the others? If, on the other 
hand, the axis did really at this time become more 
oblique, and if the autlior of this narrative knew it, 
he could not do otherwise, since the omission of 
months and weeks was as necessary to the accuracy 
of his account as the mention of seasons.* 

" This," said the Professor, '^ is remarkable, and, so 
far as I can see, unaccountable on any ordinary theory, 
although reasonable enough if the autlior of tliis ' 
chapter had actual knowledge of the earth's axis hav- 
ing then become oblique. 

* Of course, an oblique axis was absolutely necessary for the exist- 
ence of seasons, and for those *' signs" which measure from the ver- 
nal equinox, and it very seriously affects days, since it causes them 
to be long in summer and short in winter. But it neither caused the 
year to exist nor does it affect its length. Yet the obliquity is im- 
portant. Otherwise the year would have come and gone as unnoticed 
as the precession of the equinoxes. In harmony with this difference 
in the relation of that great event to these measures of time it hap- 
pened (?) that, in the fiat, the preposition "for," which, in accordance 
with the Hebrew idiom, should be repeated before each noun, is 
omitted before years. "And let them be for signs and for seasons, 
and for days and years." 

Perhaps even to mention this is attaching too much importance to 
what most will think an accidental omission. But this whole cliapter 
is so curious, so big with truth, that it is not safe to omit a close scru- 
tiny of any thing in it. 



186 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

" But how about the third office which these lights 
were to perform ? It seems to me somewhat unrea- 
sonable if this is a series of absolutely phenomenal 
descriptions, that the lights in the firmament of 
heaven,' which you as well as all scientists believe 
had been shining on our globe for countless ages, 
should, at so late a period as the close of the tertiary, 
be appointed to give light upon the earth." 

I do not venture to hope that I can solve every 
problem. Ability fully to comprehend this narrative 
implies a complete knowledge of our world's early 
history. Of all its statements those in relation to the 
fourth period are the most difficult, because so little 
is yet known of what happened in that great stretch 
of time to which it refers. 

The fiat was a command to these bodies to do cer- 
tain new things, or, if you please, to discharge certain 
new offices. It may also have been a command to 
continue certain old offices. As, if one were giving a 
new charter to an old city, he would naturally men- 
tion the privileges which were to continue as well as 
the new ones. I would say, therefore, that I see in 
this command an enumeration of old duties in con- 
nection wath the new ones, in order that no one 
might claim for these bodies exemption in any partic- 
ular from God's control. 

This seems to me the most probable explanation of 
what Moses says. Whether the belief that a dense 



OUR FIFTH EVENING. 137 

cloud-envelope formed as the cold of the glacial 
period came on, and the fiat was directed to its re- 
moval, as some have thought, has any foundation in 
fact, is very doubtful. For myself I prefer the ex- 
planation which I have given. 

" This whole matter," said the Professor, " is very 
curious. It is strange that Moses, with his Hebrew 
notions of the importance of Sabbaths and months, 
says nothing of either when speaking of the meas- 
ures of time. And it certainly is very remarkable 
that he places the statement that the lights were to 
be for seasons just where he does — that is, after fruit- 
trees, and before living species of animals, for the 
glacial period comes in that interval, and it was the 
pivotal period between the uniform climate of the 
earlier world and the wonderfully varied climate of 
the present day. The conclusions are too startling. 
They bewilder me. I must take time to consider 
them. But 1 find great difiiculty in the next two 
verses. To me they seem to contradict your explana- 
tion of the fourteenth verse. The writer says, 'And 
God made the ^ two great lights ; the greater light to 
rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night : he 
made the stars also ; ' and so on through the next verse. 
I have always been told that this verse has reference 
to the actual creation of those bodies ; and since it is 

^The article is omitted in our version, but it is found in tlio 
Hebrew. 



138 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

placed in the fourth period it is fair to suppose tliat 
Moses himself believed that they were formed after 
the things mentioned in the earlier periods, as, for 
example, after the grass and the herbs yielding seed, 
and after the fruit-trees. But the fossils tell us tluit 
the sun had been shining for untold ages before there 
were any fruit-trees. So far as I can see 

Objection 24a- , . . ... . , -, r- i 

About the or- this IS a Contradiction 01 the record 01 the 
rocks ; or, if in some way you throw this 
verse back to an earlier date, does not that destroy the 
chronological order which you claim for this story ? 
God undoubtedly made the sun, moon, and stars at 
some time, but not at so late a period as Moses says 
he did." 

We set out, I replied, when we began this discus- 
sion, with the theory that Moses means just exactly 
wdiat he says. Our adherence to this has caused many 
seemingly formidable difficulties to disappear. We 
must still hold to it. Hence when, after the command 
to the lights to divide between the day and the night, 
and to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and 
years, Moses adds, "and it was so" — that is, the fiat 
was obeyed — we are stopped from saying that he 
thought, or that he wished his hearers to think, that 
the bodies whose obedience was recorded in that 
phrase were made afterward — that is, made after 
they had done as they had been commanded. More- 
over, he had previously told of days and nights and 



OUR FIFTH EVENING. 139 

mornings and evenings. How could lie possibly have 
dreamed of saying that the sun was made after all 
that? To believe this requires not only ignorance of 
our world's histoiy, and a ready power of miscon- 
ception, but also the assumption that the author of the 
narrative used words with such looseness as to mean 
little or nothing. 

" Those verses are in the account ; they mean some- 
thing; wliat is it? why are they there?" 

I see in them only a parenthetical statement to 
guard against the tendency of the Hebrews to worship 
tlie heavenly bodies, which was exceedingly strong. 
After recording the command and its fulfillment — 
" and it was so " — an act of mastership merely — Moses 
claims infinitely higher rank for his God, and forever 
denies the self -existence of these bodies by adding the 
all-important statement that he made them, and set 
them in the firmament to give light upon the earth 
and to rule over the day and night, and to divide be- 
tween the light and darkness. That is, God made 
those bodies, and made them on purpose to perform 
the very ofiices which the Hebrews daily saw them 
filling. Supremacy could go no further; and the 
writer adds, in order that no one of the heavenly 
bodies should be deemed independent of God, '^le 
made the stars also." Hence, in reference to all these 
luminaries, the sun in its might, the moon in its silver 
radiance, and the stars in their mysterious beauty — 



140 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

the gods of the sniToimding nations — Elohim is not 
set forth as first among equals, bnt infinitely higher. 

" But," said the Professor, " are you not attaching 
too much importance to the words ^and 
it was so ? ' We read, ' Let the earth 
bring forth grass, herbs, and fruit-trees,' followed by 
those same words, ' and it was so ; ' and yet in the very 
next verse we read, ' And the earth brouglit forth 
grass, and herbs, and fruit-trees.' After those Avords, 
which indicate the earth's obedience to the command, 
we read that it did the very thing which, if your 
exegesis is correct, it had already done. Is this not 
fatal to the conclusion which you draw ? " 

No, I said, the cases are not parallel. It is a 
fact that the earth brought forth grasses, herbs, and 
fruit-trees in obedience to the command, and from 
that time onward it went on bringing them forth. 
The command caused them to come into existence, 
and they continue to the present day to be brought 
forth. As to the sun and moon the case is very dif- 
ferent. Had Moses, after announcing their obedience 
to the command, said that they continue to be for 
signs and for seasons, and for days and for years, no 
one could have objected. Instead of that he records 
the command, and that it was so done, and then adds 
the great fact that God made the sun, moon, and 
stars, and placed them on high. 

'^ I do not know that I can justly object to this ; 



OUR FIFTH EVENING, 141 

nor am 1 prepared to fully accept it. It is so con- 
trary to all my notions of this account, so different 
from all the explanations of commentators and others, 
that it needs careful study before accepting it, and I 
fear, even if you are riglit, that it will be long before 
the world accepts it. 

" But, however that may be, you have not replied 
to my question, which I will repeat. If it can be 
made out that verses 16, IT, and 18 refer 

Objection 26. 

to an earner period than, say, tor example, 
that in which fruit-trees appeared, does it not destroy 
that chronological order to which you attach so much 
importance ? " 

I think not. The account says, " Let the lights in 
the firmament of heaven divide ; " and the fulfillment 
of the command is set forth in tlie assertion that ^4t 
was so." Then comes a parentlietical remark of 
great importance, not, it is true, in chronological 
order, but so guarded that error is unnecessary. 
The writer, after recording their obedience, says, 
'' And God made the two great lights ; ... he made 
the stars also, and placed them in the firmament " for 
certain purposes ; and then the story, momentarily 
interrupted, moves on to the creation of certain an- 
imals, the creative act next in order, not to the cre- 
ation of the lights, but to their apjjointment to divide 
between the day and the night, and to be for signs 
and for seasons. 



142 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

To make the matter clearer, if that be possible, let 
me illustrate. In some brief history of the United 
States I find what purports to be a list of presidents. 
I read something like this : 

George Washington, 

John Adams, 

Thomas Jefferson, 

James Madison, 

James Monroe, 

John Q nine J Adams, 

Andrew Jackson ; 
son of a Scotch-Irishman who died before tlie birth of 
his illustrious son ; 

Martin Yan Buren, etc. 
Now, what would be thought of a critic who should 
seriously propose to reject this list as chronologically 
false because, after Jackson's name as president, a 
circumstance is mentioned which occurred long before 
the election of his predecessors to that high oflSce ? 
If he should insist that the writer has violated the 
chronological order we should justly laugh at him ; 
and, if we deemed it worth w^liile to waste any words 
on him, would reply that the w^'iter of the list had 
seen fit to put into it an interesting fact about whose 
chronological position there could, in the nature of the 
case, be no mistake. 

So in regard to these verses ; the author, after 
speaking of these days and nights, and of the repeated 



OUR FIFTH EVENING. 148 

occurrence of evenings and mornings, and of the obe- 
dience of the " lights" to the divine fiat, put into his 
narrative a statement equally out of its order, but 
one about which there ought to have been no mis- 
take. But readers and expounders were not content 
with the story as written. They tried to force out of 
it corroboration of their so-called science. Such ef- 
forts, based upon no knowledge of the actual history 
of our globe, resulted in a muddle from which the 
Christian world is yet far from having escaped. 

'' But, after all, is it conceivable that God put upon 
record an account which was liable to mis- 

Objection 27. 

lead men in their unavoidable ignorance ? 

Would he not, if he had indited the narrative, have 

told them plainly that the creation of the sun and 

moon long preceded the fourth period ? " 

This is outside of the limits which w^e laid down 

for ourselves, since it does not concern the truth of 

the statements themselves, but refers only to what 

God, if the author, would or would not have done. 

Of that, I submit, we are not the proper judges. 

This much, however, is forced upon ns as we look 

upon the works of creation. Every-w^iere we find 

mysteries — even seeming contradictions — which yield 

only to close study and increased knowledge. This is 

one of the most marked characteristics of wdiat all 

admit to be God's works. The earth seems to be flat ; 

all the world, ''in their then unavoidable ignorance," 
n 



144 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

thought it was flat, were sure it was flat, knew it was 
flat ; but it was not. The stars long seemed mere 
points of light infinitely smaller than the sun, but 
tliey are not. Now, if paradoxes and puzzles are so 
abundantly found in the book written by God's finger 
in the universe about us, and if men '' in their nn- 
avoidable ignorance " were so misled, I see no reason 
why this account, if from the same source, should be 
free from similar difficulties. Indeed, their absence 
would seem to indicate another author. 

We are told in Proverbs that " it is the glory of 
God to conceal a matter." ^ It is worth while to re- 
mark that the statements here are plain enough, and 
convey only a truthful meaning until they were put 
upon the rack of a false philosophy. Conclusions so 
arrived at are of necessity false. 

I will only add that the more our knowledge of 
the world's past history increases, and the more care- 
fully and patiently we examine this account in the 
docile spirit of true philosophy, the less the difficul- 
ties appear. Such, at least, has been my own expe- 
rience. 

" I am willing to admit the remarkable character of 
this account," replied the professor, " and that what I 
have been accustomed to consider fatal objections seem 

* It is a very interesting question, How mucli could one ignorant 
of science and free from theories have learned from this account ? 
I shall endeavor, by and by, to answer the inquiry. 



OUR FIFTH EVENIKG. 145 

to vanish in the light of modern science, and that in 
some cases they re-appear as harmonies instead of con- 
tradictions, while in others they have no existence in 
the narrative itself, but are additions of a compara- 
tively recent date. It certainly is a very different 
document from what I had been led to believe. 

" But, admitting all that you claim, it follows that 
if the author of this account did not in- 

Objection 38. 

tend to say that the sun and moon were 
made during that fourth period he has given them no 
place whatever in the order of creation. While other 
things far less noteworthy were recorded in their 
proper places the sun and moon are allowed to slip 
in on the creative stage unnoticed and unchronicled." 
It is true the writer says God made the sun and 
moon, but says nothing of the place of that event in 
the creative order, or rather, I should say, of those 
events, for they were separated by a long interval.^ 
We now know that they were formed long before 
God divided between the light and the darkness. 
Any man, unprepossessed by theories, reading this 
story, might have inferred that the sun long preceded 
the fourth period, in which it is first spoken of. 
The mention of day and night, the tliree evenings 
and mornings, the command to " lights in the firma- 

* That they seem in the story to be near together is no more re- 
markable than that God's other work makes them seem to be of the 
same size and distance. 



146 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

ment of heaven/' the explicit statement that they 
liad obeyed God's command before speaking of God's 
having made them, ought, even before modern sci- 
ence, to have prevented mistake. But to those who 
read this account with the advantage of knowing 
something of the early history of the sun and earth it 
is fairly luminous. That people did misunderstand 
is no more to be wondered at than that they mis- 
understood the size and distance of the heavenly 
bodies. 

But you may say the fact remains that if the mak- 
ing of the two great lights did not occur in the fourth 
period it has no place in the narrative. Well, wdiat 
if their creation has no place in the creative order ? 
What then ? I do not see how that affects the ques- 
tions which we are discussing. We agreed to keep 
strictly to this : Are the statements in that account 
true, and are they placed in the proper order ? We 
have nothing to do with omissions. 

We have not the right to say what should or should 
not have been inserted. That was a question to be 
decided by the author according to his views of pro- 
priety. If we think our views are better than his it 
is merely a question as to his good judgment, and does 
not in the least affect his truthfulness. 

To this the Pi'ofessor made no reply, but merely 
said : " We have had enough for one evening. We 
will adjourn till to-morrow night." 



OUR FIFTH EVENING. 147 

A gleaner, going over the ground which we have 
just passed, was struck by the singular circumstance 
that dividing between the day and the night has a fiat 
all to itself and in the most conspicuous place, while 
signs and seasons, days and years, are all lumped into 
one command, and asks why ? It was thousands of 
years after Moses before the curious fact was known 
that the varying length of the day and night was the 
first and most striking evidence of an increase in the 
obliquity of the earth's axis, the thing that was neces- 
sary before the lights in the firmament of heaven 
could be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and 
years. 

I found no argument on this, but speak of it to 
show the drift of every thing in the narrative toward 
some near harmony with the earth's history. Its 
author must have known all about it. 



148 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 



OUR SIXTH EVENING, 



OUR EARTH S RANK 11^ THE UNIVERSE. 

The following evening was too stormy for the Pro- 
fessor to venture out, but tlie next evening he was 
promptly on hand. We at once took up the thread 
of our last conversation. 

" At least in one respect," said he, '' I think you 
must admit that Moses was in error, for 

Objection 29. 

he shows a great, but I must admit very 
natural, ignorance as to the relative size and impor- 
tance of the earth and heavenly bodies. He thought 
that tlie former was the center of the universe, and 
that the sun and moon were less than it, but greater 
than the stars. I need not say that modern science 
has reversed all that." 

This is an old charge, I replied, so often repeated 
that m^iij believe Moses really says so. But it is 
only one example of the injustice with which this ac- 
count has been treated, and requires no other reply 
than that which I have so often made before : " Mo- 
ses does not say so." If I am mistaken take the 
book and show where it says (1) the world is the 
center of the universe ; or, (2) the sun and moon are 
less than the earth ; or, (3) larger than the stars. 



OUR SIXTH EVENING. 149 

[He first reads verses 14-19.] '^ I must admit that 
Moses does not give these three propositions in so 
many words ; but he does say that God made and set 
the two lights in the heavens to give light upon the 
earth, and, moreover, he expressly calls them great 
lights, and never intimates that the stars are more 
than specks of light." 

Well, is it not true? Did not God make them all? 
Did he not set them in the heavens ? Do they not 
give light upon the earth? Are there not two great 
lights? Certainly, all this may be, and is true, with- 
out a word as to their size. 

"^It is strange how yoM get away from difficulties. 
Yes, it is true that they are ' for lights Q^^wtion 30 
to ffive lio-ht upon the earth ' but surely "^oses says 

^ ^ I ' ./ sun and moon 

that is not their only use." ^^^^ "^^^^ 

•^ merely to give 

Moses nowhere says it is. I see in the light to the 

^ earth." 

account merely a statement that they 
were to be for lights to give light upon the earth, 
and that God made them and put them in the 
heavens to give light upon the earth ; and, whatever 
their other uses, you cannot deny that this is one, 
nor that it was purposed in the divine mind, un- 
less you think God did not know the result of his 
own acts. 

As to the relative size of sun, moon, and stars, I 
see no intimation whatever. It speaks of the sun as 
the greater light, and of the moon as the lesser light, 



150 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

and that is all. In that I see no error. It was true 
then, and it is true now. 

Nothing is said about the stars except that God 
made them also. Within tlie last few years the 
spectroscope has confirmed this by showing that they 
are composed of the same materials as the sun, and 
we know from astronomers that they are subject to 
the same laws of gravitation. 

" Yes," the Professor answered, ^' but Moses says 
the greater light was made to rule the day and the 
lesser light to rule the night. Certainly this implies 
inferiority to the earth, whose days and nights are 
deemed of sufficient importance to be thus honored." 

Whether it does or not, it certainly does not im- 
ply any thing as to size. But it is not with Moses 
that YOU are contendino; but with Nature. The sun 
does rule the day. As its northern declination in- 
creases, or decreases, so do the days. The moon, too, 
shines longer in the nights as the sun goes south- 
ward, and gives greater relief to the hours of dark- 
ness in the long nights of winter. Is it not true, then, 
that the greater light rules the day, and the lesser light 
the night ? And will you venture to say that this 
was not foreseen by their Creator ? No ! These state- 
ments, taken without addition or din:iinution, are true. 

"It is amazing how objections vanish by so simple 
a process as comparing them with the record itself. I 
know nothino; like it." 



OUR SIXTH EVENING, 151 

If I read the book of nature aright, no beings 
resembling any of whom we have any knowledge, or 
of whom we can even conceive, exist now or could 
by any possibility have existed in the past on the 
sun or any of the planets or moons of the solar 
system. 

The sun is inconceivably hot, an ocean of fire whose 
waves rise and fall, not a few feet, but thousands of 
miles. On it are in constant operation whirlwinds 
and currents rushing thousands of miles in a minute, 
not horizontally only, but upward and downward. 
The pretty belief was once prevalent that clouds of 
enormous thickness protected the surface of an in- 
terior globe from the intense heat of a luminous and 
fiery envelope, and that thus shielded there was a 
world of light and beauty inhabited by intelligent be- 
ings. But this was poetry, not science, and no as- 
tronomer now accepts it."^ 

The planet Mercury is hot enough to melt lead. 

Yenus has, during its day, a temperature above 
that of boiling water, and from the great inclination 
of its axis (49 degrees, 61 minutes) its polar circles 



* This theory was suggested by Wilson, but is generally attributed 
to the elder Herschel. 

" The discovery of the conservation of force, and the convertibility 
of heat and force, was fatal to this theory. Such a sun as that of 
Herschel would have cooled off entirely in a few days, and then we 
should receive neither light nor heat from it." — Professor Newcomb, 
Popular Astronomy, 



152 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

and tropics overlap, so tliat its climate must be the 
most extraordinary imaginable. 

Mars seems the most like an inhabitable planet, 
possessing, as it does, both air and water, but it re- 
sembles the earth in some of its earlier geological 
periods rather than at the present time. It seems 
destitute of vegetation, for although it has well- 
marked seasons, and the snow can be seen melting 
away, there are no such changes in the color of its 
land as would indicate the coming and going of plant 
life. 

As for the asteroids, no one thinks them inhabited. 
The indications are very strong that Jupiter, Saturn, 
Uranus, and Neptune are yet in an intensely hot and 
probably molten condition."^ 

As to the planets, very few can now be found who 
regard any of them as inhabitable by beings of whom 
we can conceive, but there are some who think it at 
least possible that the moons of Jupiter, and perhaps 
of the other outer planets, could support beings like 
ourselves. We know so little of these bodies that any 
opinion can be but the merest conjecture except as to 
one thing. The two largest ones must be subjected 
to great extremes of cold, since the night of the one 
is eighty-six hours long, and of the other two hun- 
dred, or more than eight days such as ours. In the 

* Newcomb's Popular Astronomy^ pp. 516, 519, brushes away the 
once common beUef that other worlds are inhabited. 



OUR SIXTH EVENING. 153 

case of the more remote planets the conditions on 
their moons are yet more unfavorable for either plants 
or animals. 

There remains only our moon. Science shows 
it has neither air nor water. And if that is not 
enough to prove it uninhabitable, astronomers have 
found that its temperature varies far beyond the 
possible limits of endurance. 

" Although no one believes the moon now inhabited, 
yet not a few think it did once support a teeming popu- 
lation, the air and water having been absorbed into the 
interstices of the crust, or of the rocks that form it." 

As Professor Huxley says, " We will, if you please, 
test this view in the light of facts." 

Ever since the moon became cool enough to be 
covered with a crust, and of course long before the 
period of supposed life, its days and nights have been 
essentially as they are now, nearly three hundred and 
forty hours of uninterrupted sunshine, followed by a 
night of equal length. Even if the moon had possessed 
an atmosphere as dense as that of the earth — scarcely 
possible with its so much smaller mass — a sun shining 
for two weeks, and a night for an equal time, would 
have produced extremes of heat and cold fatal to 
beings of flesh and blood. 

'' I do not know about that. Man has wonder- 
ful ability to resist changes of temperature. I 
think that might have been got along wath, provid- 



154 GENESIS I AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

ing the moon really possessed an atmosphere and 
oceans." 

The present condition of the moon's surface seems 
to be proof that it never had any water, at least not 
any large amount, as would be needed to fill an ocean. 
It presents an inconceivable roughness. There is 
nothing on the earth, except in some very limited and 
recent volcanic regions, to compare with it. Now, 
when we consider the eroding power of water and 
frost, as we see their effects here on our own planet in 
the cutting and carving of mountains,^ and then reflect 
that the moon has been a solid body at least as long 
as tlie earth (many times longer, according to most 
believers in the nebular hypothesis), and during 
all that infinitude of time has experienced not one 
winter to each of our years, but thirteen ; that the cold 
is not equaled outside of our arctic regions, it seems 
impossible that the moon's surface, had there been an 
atmosphere and oceans on it, would to-day present 
any thing more than the gentlest undulations. The 
wonderful roughness, so visible in every telescope, 
has been subjected to no such influence ; hence I find 
myself forced to conclude that neither air nor water 
in large quantities ever existed there, and that life 
was always an impossibility. 

* This is so well known to geologists as to require no proof. But 
the non-geological reader will do well to turn to Dana's Manual of 
Geology^ page 635. He will be amazed to see what has been done by 
the action of water. 



OUR SIXTH EVENING. 155 

" What," asked the Professor, " has this to do with 
the Mosaic account ? " 

More, probably, than you imagine. You have found 
fault with Moses because, as you say, he gives undue 
importance to our earth. Now, omitting spiritual 
beings — whom your barometrics "^ does not recog- 
nize — of what use are the sun and moon, except to 
our earth ? Mind, I do not say they are of no other 
use ; I ask you to tell of some other, and what it is. Of 
course, I know that the sun holds tlie planets in their 
orbits ; but that office is only subordinate to the pur- 
pose, whatever it was, for which the solar system was 
formed, and has nothing to do with the moon. She 
does not hold any bodies in their places. 

'' It seems very absurd to conceive of the sun's being 
made for this little earth. Your question 

^ ^ Objection 31. 

implies a return to the old astronomy, which 
taught that the earth was immovable and that the uni- 
verse went around it." 

"And the universe went around it!" I have not 
intimated such a belief, nor do I see any thing in this 
narrative which points that way. I see only a state- 
ment that God made these bodies to give light upon 
the earth, and to be for time-measures ; and these 
very things I see them do. That God purposed these 

* Barometrics : &(xro5, weight, and meifroTZ, a measure; that division 
of science which has to do only with what can be weiglied in grains, 
or tons, or measured in inches. 



156 GENESIS I AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

results when he made these bodies I must believe or 
consider him ignorant of the results to flow from his 
own actions. 

As to the absurdity of which you speak, I cannot 
see it. I have in mind an ilhistration of what has 
been done for our earth that may have no weight 
with you, but to me is of infinite importance. I 
have it on evidence which to me is demonstration, that 
He who made all things, and by whom all things con- 
sist, actually lived some thirty-three years on this 
globe in a human form. The greater includes the less, 
and, believing this, I can easily believe that he made 
the sun and moon for man. 

It is worth noting that the men who think it ab- 
surd and belittling that God should do so much for 
man regard all final causes as absurd. In other 
words, it belittles God to think that he made these 
lights for so small a purpose as the use and bene- 
fit of our race ; but it is not absurd to suppose he 
made them for no purpose at all ! Making them for 
man, forsooth, is belittling ; making them for nothing 
whatever is in character with a god, an apt illustration 
of that unconscious intelligence which some would 
have us believe made the world. 

Such a god would be worthy of an agnostic, for 
such a being would be unknowable and inconceivable. 

But you have not answered my question, and I wait 
with some curiosity for you to tell me of some other 



OUR SIXTH EVENING. 157 

use for which these bodies were made. I submit that 
" for his pleasure " does not answer my question. It 
is merely a child's answer, '^ I did it because I had a 
mind to," and answers nothing. 

"^ I must confess that I cannot conceive of any use 
other than that of which you have spoken, although, 
perliaps, some one else may. Until I have further 
light I am content to give up what T have always 
supposed a real and important objection ; and if you 
are willing I am ready to take up the next period." 

As it was late we thought it best to defer the dis- 
cussion of the next period to another evening. 



158 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 



OUR SEVENTH EVENING. 



THE AIN^IMALS. 

Genesis i, 20-25. 

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving 
creature that hath life^ and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open 
firmament of heaven. 

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that 
moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and 
every luinged fowl after his kind : and God saiu that it luas good. 

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill 
the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. 

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after 
his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: 
and it was so. 

25 A7id God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after 
their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: 
and God saiu that it was good. 

The Professor read these verses aloud, and then said : 

^'This account of the creation of animals has been 

thought the most vulnerable portion of the narrative. 

It is said that Moses here teaches that there 

Error 32. "No 

animals before were HO animals before whales, or at least 

present kinds.'" i . i ^ i i i • t 

some kmd oi water vertebrates, and birds, 
and no land creatures before cattle, beasts, and other 
living species. Of course, every tjro in geology knows 
better. I think, from what you said when speaking 
of the third period, that your view is very different." 



OUR SEVENTH EVENING. 159 

Yes, it is different. It seems to me that all con- 
flict between tliis account and science comes from 
people's interpolating tlieir own notions of what 
Moses onglit to say, and assuming that he intended to 
teach not what he actually says, but what they think 
he ought to say. 

In regard to life, and as to the order of the differ- 
ent kinds of organic forms, this is all that the record 
says : The earth brought forth grass, herbs, and fruit- 
trees. Afterward, the waters swarmed with the liv- 
ing moving creatures and great whales, and fowls flew 
in the air. Yet later the land produced cattle, beasts, 
and other living creatures. Or, in briefest form : 

1. Silence as to any prior life, plant or animal. 

2. Present plants. 

3. Whales and other water animals yet living, and 
modern birds. 

4. Cattle, beasts, and other land animals of living 
kinds. 

In geological parlance, he speaks only of the last 
three " horizons " out of the many which are now 
known to have existed. Is his order correct ? I have 
already quoted De la Saporta as saying, " Before the 
end of the tertiary the immense majority of our actual 
florae were established in the limits which tliey now 
occupy." 

Professor Dana, in his Manual of Geology^ third 

edition, page 518, says that ''all the flshes, reptiles, 
11 



160 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

birds, and mammals of the tertiary and earlier times 
are now extinct." Hence, "living " kinds came after 
the tertiary, and consequently after the present 
flora. 

In the next period, the quaternary, are found the 
very fauna that Moses mentions, to wit, whales and 
other water vertebrates and birds, and these, too, of 
living species ; or, as Professor Nicholson says, in his 
Life History of the Earthy page 345 : "]S"o extinct 
species of fishes, amphibians, or reptiles of the qua- 
ternary have been found." He says the birds too, so 
far as found, are all of living species except a few 
kinds — the moas and other wingless birds — and of 
these probably all became extinct within a few cent- 
uries. 

" The mammals of this period, with few exceptions, 
are extinct." ^ Le Conte, in his Geology^ P^g^ 569, 
says : " In the quaternary came a new set of mammals, 
which also have disappeared ; and lastly came present 
species, the living mammals of to-day" — just exactly 
as Moses says. So then, as far as I can see, if these 
high authorities are right the order in which Moses 
has placed his three '' horizons " is correct. 

" Then," said the Professor, " if this be so, Moses 
says nothing about the first introduction of life, and 
leaves unnoticed and unspoken of the millions of years 
that preceded the few thousands since the tertiary." 

♦Dana, Manual of Geology^ p. 563. 



OUR SEVENTH EVENING, 161 

Of all this he says nothing whatever. Why 
should he ? No one at that time knew any thing of 
the millions of years and the long series of "popula- 
tions " before man, and there was no reason why God 
should reveal it in a book given, not to teach science, 
but religion. It makes known God's creatorship of 
all the vegetable and animal world of which any one 
then had any knowledge. Tliis it does, not in hap- 
hazard order, but in that which geology says is 
correct. 

'' But," said the Professor, '' you will find it very 
difficult to persuade Cliristendom that it 

. Objection 33. 

IS right to limit the account to ])lants and 
creatures of the present day. The world has always 
believed that this story tells of the first appearance of 
life on the globe." 

I am well aware how difficult it is to get out of 
old ruts. But what right has any one to say tliat 
"grass, herbs, and fruit-trees" — land-plants — really 
mean the sea-weeds which for so long were the only 
vegetation? How could the animals named by Moses 
refer to times when there was not one whale or fowl 
or vertebrate of any kind ? Taken exactly as it says, 
it is true and its order correct. Forcing the text in- 
volves it in error. I protest against such liberties, 
and then, because when so twisted it is not true, charg- 
ing it with contradicting science. Professor Huxley 
is very severe upon those who force the Hebrew to 



162 GENESIS I AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

say what they think it ought, and yet lie does the very 
same thing, for he assumes that Moses teaches that 
his plants and animals are all that ever lived, and 
on this assumption he bases his whole attack on 
this chapter."^ 

The Professor replied that this had been to him a 

real difficulty, for he, too, had always supposed that 

Moses did tell the story of all life. But, granting 

this to be a mistake, there was another 

Objection 34. . , . , . t i . -ii*- 

matter m which, it seemed to him, Moses 
w^as in the wrong. Darwin and others who have studied 
the world's history in its fossils say that present spe- 
cies sprang from others less highly organized, chang- 
ing from earlier forms to present by imperceptible 
degrees, requiring, as Darwin says, perhaps ten thou- 
sand generations for a single well-defined species ; 
while in Genesis each kind is represented as made ab- 
ruptly from water and earth, and not from previously 
existing living forms. 

I see nothing, I replied, as to tlie how. I read 
that the plants sprouted forth from the ground ; that 
the waters swarmed with certain kinds of life ; and 
that the earth brought forth cattle, beasts, etc. ; but 
nothing whatever as to the way in which it was done. 
Therefore there can be no contradiction. The account 
merely says that God commanded these things to be, 
tells us the command was obeyed, and leaves us to 

*See his "G-eiiesis and its Interpreters," in the Nineteenth Century. 



OUR SEVENTH EVENING. 168 

discover, if we can, how it was done. To me it looks 
most reasonable, and most in accordance with Christ's 
methods (by whom all things were made) when per- 
forming miracles, to use what was nearest ready for 
his purpose ; and hence that present animals and 
plants sprang from the nearest preceding species 
rather than from raw water and earth."^ So far as 
this I am an evolutionist ; but it is evolution under 
divine guidance, and no less God's act than any other 
mode of bringing living forms into existence. 

As to the abruptness of these occurrences, if by 
that you mean that Moses represents the plants and 
animals as coming into being in some way more rapid 
than that in which Darwin and his followers suppose 
^' development " to have gone on, I quite agree with 
you.f According to these gentlemen, the change 
from the old to the new species was an almost infi- 
nitely long process, requiring thousands of generations 
for its completion. Compared with this the Mosaic 

* For a fuller statement, see ''Miracle, Law, and Evolution," by 
the writer, in vol. vii, article 7, of the Transactions of the New York 
Academy of Science. 

f See Origin of Species^ page 91. To form a fairly well marked 
variety would require a thousand or more generations. Darwin is 
generous of time. On page 90 he says : " But each of these changes 
may represent a million of generations." Here the mathematicians 
step in and {Recent Advances in Science^ p. 175, London, 1876) show 
that the possibility of life upon the earth cannot extend back into 
limitless eternity. Some tifteen millions of years, a mere bagatelle to 
what Darwinism demands, would take us back to an earth whose 
surface was molten. 



164 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

" deyelopment " appears sudden, or, if you please, 
" abrupt." 

But abruptness is no longer out of harmony with 
science. Its tendency is strongly that way. Professor 
Huxley, in his Lay Sermons^ says : " Darwin unneces- 
sarily hampered himself with" the motto that appears 
so often in his pages, ' Nature makes no leaps.' " 

Professor J. Le Conte, in his Elements of Geology^ 
page 3Y2, says : '^ But it is impossible to overlook the 
suddenness of a new class — -fishes — and a new depart- 
ment — vertebrates — of the animal kingdom. Observe 
that at the horizon of their appearance in the upper- 
most Silurian there is no apparent break in the strata, 
and therefore no evidence of a lost record,"^ and yet 
the advance is immense. It is impossible to account 
for this unless we admit paroxysms of more rapid 
movement of evolution, and that when conditions are 
favorable and the time is ripe for a particular change it 
takes place with exceptional rapidity and in a few 
generations." " Paroxysms of more rapid movement 
of evolution " is a scientific euphemism for what in 
Genesis are represented as results of the divine fiat : 
Let there be ; or, Let the waters bring fortli ; or. Let 
the earth bring forth. 

The following, from Nicholson's Ancient Life His- 

* A lost record is the deus ex machina that helps your thorough 
evolutionist out of every trouble. It is so easy to say and so hard to 
dispi'ove ! 



OUR SEVENTH EVENING. 165 

tory of the Earthy page 373, is in full agreement with 
Le Conte : " Upon no theory of evolution can we find a 
satisfactory explanation for the constant introduction 
throughout geological time of new forms of life which 
do not appear to have been preceded by pre-existent 
allied types. The graptolites and trilobites have no 
known predecessors. The insects appear suddenly 
in the Devonian, and the arachnida (the spider fam- 
ily) and the myriopods in the Carboniferous under 
well differentiated and highly specialized types. The 
dibranchiate cephalopods appear with equal apparent 
suddenness in the older Mesozoic, and no known 
type of the Paleozoic period can be pointed out as 
a possible ancestor. The wonderful dicotyledonous 
flora of the Cretaceous similarly surprises us without 
any prophetic annunciation from the older Jurassic." 
The fact that Professor Nicholson is not a believer in 
any special fiat gives all the more weight to his state- 
ments, since they cannot be suspected of a theological 
bias. Professor Dana adds to this the great weight 
of his name. In his Manual of Geology^ page 600, 
he says : " The transitions between species, genera, 
tribes, etc., in geological history are, with rare excep- 
tions, abrupt." The more these facts are studied the 
more evident it becomes that at certain epochs wholly 
new types, that is, with predecessors not at all simi- 
lar, started into existence without assignable cause ; 
whereas, at other epochs, although the types may be 



166 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

referable to older forms, yet new genera and species 
came with equal suddenness into being, and witb 
equal lack of assignable cause. So, too, Moses tells of 
new plants and animals appearing witli suddenness ; 
but lie assigns a cause which is amply sufficient for 
the effect. 

Darwin, in his Origin of Species^ page 424, sets 
forth his belief that the Creator at some remote 
period formed '' four or five progenitors of animals, 
and an equal or less number of plants;" or, as he 
elsewhere expresses it, " Life witli its several powers 
was originally breathed by the Creator into a few 
forms." To this Messrs. Le Conte, Nicholson, and 
.Dana add, tliat instead of the uniformly impercept- 
ible changes which Darwin claims in his theory the 
changes were abrupt and brief, and, so far as science 
knows, unaccountable, save by some deeper law which 
as yet no one has been able to discover — perhaps 1 
should say, no scientist has been able to discover. 

If the plants and animals of which Moses speaks 
were produced as he says they were, I cannot see in 
what respect the geological record would be different 
from what it is. 

'' This is very curious. But as a scientific man I 
am exceedinp-ly unwillinp* to admit any di- 

Objection35. .... 

vine interposition. I would refer every 
thing to the working of law ; in some cases too deep 
for us to discover, but vet law." 



OUR SEVENTH EVENING. 167 

This would lead to a discussion as to what is meant 
by law — a question outside of our limits. All we 
promised to do was to inquire whether the statements 
in that first chapter of Genesis agree with those rec- 
ords which science has read for us in the rocks. 

Still, I will say a few words as indicating what 
seems to me tlie truth in the matter. It is a sugges- 
tion, and not an argument. 

To make my meaning clearer I will borrow an 
illustration from the laws of our country. These are 
of two kinds ; those which, for lack of a better name, 
may be called ordinary laws, because they apply to 
circumstances which are constantly recurring, since 
they arise from the ordinary conditions of society ; 
and those which may be called special laws, because 
they refer to matters which, in the nature of the case, 
cannot occur again. Laws, for example, which pre- 
scribe the proper mode of executing and attesting 
wills or enforcing contracts, or which forbid theft 
and murder, are of the first class, while the resolution 
which declared the American colonies free and inde- 
pendent States, and the law which bestowed money 
and a tract of land on La Fayette, belong to the sec- 
ond class. Those who believe physical law to be only 
the manifestations of omnipotent will refer to the 
latter not merely acts of constant repetition, such as 
those which result from gravitation or chemical aflin- 
ity, but such as are in the nature of the case infrequent 



168 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

or even solitary. The former may be called ordinary 
law, the latter come under special law. The calling 
of the universe into existence was a special law, since 
tlie act admitted of no repetition. In this sense the 
appearing of plants and animals on our globe was 
but the manifestation of law. So, too, the " develop- 
ment" of new classes and orders, or even of new gen- " 
era, must, in tlie nature of the case, have occurred 
but a few times in proportion to the births by ordi- 
nary generation. Hence it, too, comes under the 
head of special law — that is, the divine will acting in 
this special manner at the proper epochs. It makes 
no difference whether we attribute it to God's direct 
act, to God's purpose, to God's fiat, or to " special law." 
In this sense I admit that the production of the plants 
and animals of which Moses speaks was due to law. 
To this the Professor made no reply, but said: 
"How about the ae^e of man? Many 

Objection 36. , . , , ^ - ^ ^ 1/ 

tlnnk that the six thousand years usually 
allotted to the duration of the human race is far too 
small. What is your opinion ? " 

I do not find any thing about it in this narrative, 
nor can it, so far as I am able to see, be satisfactorily 
made out from the histories recorded in the Bible. 
I am sure, however, that the appearance of man on 
the earth was very recent. 

"But is it not thought that man lived during the 
latter part of the glacial epoch ? " 



OUR SEVENTH EVENING. 169 

Yes, I replied, and probably it is true ; but you 
must remember that the glacial period is something 
very indefinite. In fact, it reaches to the present 
day, or at least there have all along been glaciers, and 
there are yet ; and under their debris the remains of 
animals and plants of present species have been de- 
posited. Should Switzerland a thousand years hence 
be searched by geologists they would find under the 
drift now forming utensils and other things belong- 
ing to the present day, and if they were cut off from 
any knowledge of the intervening centuries the 
scientists of that day, if affected with a penchant for 
great chronological stretches, might fling the present 
epoch back into the times of the great glaciers. In 
short, of all modes of computing time, this seems to me 
the most liable to lead to error. Very little is known 
of the period which reaches from the beginning of the 
glacial stage to the daw^n of history, and conclusions 
as to the events which occurred, and especially as to 
their distance from us, must be received with the 
utmost caution. 

But should there, hereafter, be discovered irrefra- 
gable proof of man's existence even in the tertiary, it 
would prove nothing as to this account, since it is 
possible that there may have been earlier and now 
extinct races. This the first chapter of Genesis 
neither affirms nor denies. Elsewhere in the Bible 
there are statements which look as if there were other 



170 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

men besides the children of Adam. Here I leave the 
subject, remarking only that thus far the geological 
evidence of a pre-adamic man is Vv^eak. 

'* There are," said the Professor, "many other ob- 
jections vrhich have been nrged against this narrative, 
but I must admit I know of none which is entitled to 
very serious consideration. Dr. Draper, 

Objection 37. « -, , , , j • j. 

lor example, says that accord mg to cer- 
tain theologians of a former age the Bible teaches that 
the earth is flat and immovable, and that there are 
no antipodes. It is very clear that no such teaching 
is found in this chapter. Close adherence to the text 
avoids all such objections. But, on the other hand, 
would it not lead to other difficulties ? For example, 
it is true that before the glacial epoch trees ^bear- 
ing fruit whose seed is inside of it,' became, as they 
are still, the dominant vegetation, and were pro- 
nounced ' good ' — that is, completed. But certainly 
you will not say that all living species were 
' brought forth ' before that time. Have not many 
species appeared since ? If so, does not that contra- 
dict this account ? " 

I am not, by any means, assured that a single new 
species has appeared since the glaciers; but if new 
species have appeared every genus dates from beyond 
that time of ice. 

But if new species really did appear after the 
fifth period I see in that no contradiction of this 



OUR SEVENTH EVENING. 171 

account. All it says is that the earth in the tliird 
period brought forth herbs yielding seed, and fruit- 
trees, and this all admit to be true. But nothing is 
said as to its then bringing forth every kind. The 
difficulty, if any there be, comes, as do so many 
others, from attributing to this account more than 
the writer saw fit to say. 

"Yes; but the vegetation was pronounced 'good.' 
This would seem to forbid the idea of further devel- 
opment." 

Was not that flora the culmination and crowning 
glory of the vegetable kingdom ? Have any higher 
or more useful types appeared since the end of the 
tertiary ? And, if not, I see no contradiction, though 
some varieties, or even some species, were added after- 
ward. Indeed, if 1 may refer to the second chapter, we 
have positive proof of a subsequent production of trees 
pleasant to the sight and good for food. Whether any 
of them were new species or not we are not told. 

" This is not the Genesis which I have read about. 
It is not the Genesis of commentators. It 

Objection 38. 

is not the Genesis in which all the world 
has believed these many centuries." 

Perhaps not, I said ; but to us the question is. Is 
this the Genesis of our Bibles ? That it differs from 
what the world has believed is to you, who have 
thrown off the yoke of authority, a matter of little 
importance. 



172 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

The present reading of the sky and of the earth's 
crust differs widely from that adopted by " scientists " 
for these many centuries, and held by them, too, with 
such earnestness that they wrenched this chapter from 
its proper meaning to compel it to support their phi- 
losophy. Armed with the civil authority, they im- 
prisoned and burned those who dared to say what all 
the world now knows to be the truth. Galileo, 
Bruno, and others were martyrs, not to this story of cre- 
ation, but to the opinionated pseudo-scientists of those 
days. And now there are those who ought to know 
better,, that write the liistory of the struggle between 
the new ideas and the old, and style it a history of 
the conflict between religion {?) and science, in wliich 
they charge all the cruelty and falsehood upon the 
book which for nearly four thousand years has per- 
sisted in telling the truth about our earth, waiting 
through the centuries, like the stars and the rocks, in 
infinite patience, for a science that could compre- 
hend it. 

The world would have been greatly the gainer 
had writers on both sides approached this narrative in 
a more docile spirit. Attempts to explain it should 
have been made with child-like willingness to be 
taught, and with readiness to confess ignorance and 
to wait for greater knowledge. I may add, too, that 
a belief in the Bible for reasons independent of this 
chapter ought to have made its friends less timorous 



OUR SEVENTH EVENING. 17 S 

in reference to tlie assaults of " science ; " and less 
ready to devise crude theories, often the laughing- 
stock of men better informed, which should remove 
the special difficulty in hand, but which too often led 
to others that were worse. 

''What! would yon have mankind passively accept 
this account without examination or criticism, as a 
child accepts the tales of the nursery ? " 

Certainly not. I would have them bring to it all 
their knowledge, examine it most carefully, and ap- 
ply to it their best powers of criticism ; but they 
should be just to it, and try it, not by what others 
may have said it says, not by what they think it 
ought to say, but by its own words. 

"I see," said the Professor, "no objection to this ; 
but I am perplexed that so many writers — mostly of 
very recent date — ^liave said that this chapter was only 
a hymn of creation, a series of poetical images, having 
no counterpart in the world's actual history." 

I do not think it necessary to show how such 
ideas have arisen. It is enough for me now that this 
account agrees so wonderfully with the facts of our 
world's early history, and especially that its many 
statements happen (?) to be arranged exactly right. 

But another question of far-reaching importance 
arises, Whence did Moses get the knowledge needed 
for making such a cosmogony? 

To this the Professor made no reply, and for some 



174 GEKESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

moments lie sat silent. He had often spoken of the 
great ignorance of those early ages, and one of his 
favorite themes had been the progress of man from a 
brute to a savage, and from a savage, through many 
intermediate grades, to his present position. At last 
he said : 

" What do you think of this account? Do you sup- 
pose Moses knew all about the matters of which he 
wrote ! " 

I have repeatedly said that I very much doubt his 
understanding fully what he wrote, and I may add 
that I am far from believing that the wisest of us 
have yet drawn from it all its stores of meaning. 
These statements of his are descriptions of events or 
phenomena in language brief but exact, and the value 
of such is not easily estimated. A child can draw 
from them instruction ; the wisest man cannot exhaust 
them. The value of exact descriptions can be seen 
in every department of science. The photographs 
taken of the last transit of Yenus are purely phe- 
nomenal. Any child who sees them can readily grasp 
the fact that the little round black spot on the photo- 
graph of the sun's disk marks the position of the planet. 
This spot he can see as readily as the astronomer ; but 
here the equality ends. The full meaning of the 
pictures can be dug out only after months of study by 
men who have devoted their lives to such work. Nor 
can even they make much progressunless furnished with 



UR SE VENTH E VENING. 1 75 

every aid of modern science, the most refined analysis, 
and tlie most careful microscopic measurements. And 
when they have exhausted their ingenuity and ceased 
from their work, the negatives — the prints are not 
accurate enough for such purposes — will be preserved 
with the utmost care, because every physicist lias 
lurking in his bosom the conviction that some sugges- 
tion, or some discovery, may throw unexpected liglit 
upon them and reveal unthought-of trutlis. 

This account is a series of such pictures, not, of 
course, on glass, but in words, and it is only very 
lately that science has made sufficient advances to 
have any adequate idea of its importance. 

" Do you mean to say tliat God intended the Bible 
to teach science ? I thought that had been ruled out 
long ago." 

No, I said ; nor did he make the stars to teach 
astronomy; nor light to teach optics ; but, for all tliat, 
in them, potentially at least, are those sciences. Id) 
not believe that science can be learned from the Bible 
any more than history can be learned from the proph- 
ecies ; but as in the latter we learn their true meaning 
from the history which records their fulfillment, so 
the science which gives us so many facts about crea- 
tion enables us to know what is the true meaning of 
those brief descriptions which make up this nar- 
rative. 

That our greater knowledge has changed our views 
12 ^ 



176 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

in this matter was not only to be expected, but tlie 
contrary is inconceivable. It would be impossible for 
an ignorant person and a philosopher to regard natural 
phenomena alike, and equally impossible to read, in 
the same sense, a description of them. Moreover, the 
divergence in their views will be wider in proportion 
as the ignorant man is sure he understands it all. 

It is interesting to note that similar changes of 
opinion have occurred from the same cause — increased 
knowledge — in reference to other ancient books. To 
Herodotus, once contemptuously styled the father of 
lies, has now been restored his well-earned title of the 
father of historj^ 

"I must think these matters over. Opinions so 
long held — not so much as capable of proof, but as 
too nearly self-evident to require proof — are not to 
be given up, and their opposites substituted, without 
a mental wrencli that leaves one sore and half dazed. 
If what you claim be true — that this so-called myth 
is the most literal and chronological document conceiv- 
able — it is a matter of great importance. It annihi- 
lates a whole literature, for what is tlie value of all 
the books — their name is legion — to prove miracles 
impossible if here is a miracle which every man can 
examine for himself ? " 

The strikino; of the clock reminded the Professor 
of the lateness of the hour ; so, stopping somewhat 
abruptly, he bade me good-night. 



OUR SEVENTH EVENING. 177 

I said above, in tlie heat of conversation, '^ I do not 
believe science can be learned from the Bible." 
Further reflection induces me to question this. The 
Bible gives us facts in many departments of knowl- 
edge, and by the study of these, co-ordinating them 
with each other and with all that can be gathered 
from other sources, I have no doubt science may 
be advanced. All admit this in archaeology, ethnog- 
raphy, history, and geography ; I think it will be 
found, when men shall study this book in the proper 
spirit, that it has unsuspected treasures in other de- 
partments of knowledge. For every one must agree 
with Dr. Draper when he says a revealed cosmogony 
must give foreshowings of discoveries that should be 
made long after — say, now, or at some future day. 



178 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 



OUR EIGHTH EVENING, 



THE VERDICT "GOOD." 



The Professor opened the discussion : 

" You have spoken several times of the verdict 
' good ' which is so often used in this chapter. Why 
is it sometimes omitted ? " 

As I have said, good, applied to things without 
moral character, means only completeness, or fitness 
for intended use. Its omission, therefore, indicates 
incompletion. Were some things fully finished, and 
others left incomplete, when the story passes on to the 
next stage ? Discoveries in modern physics now en- 
able us to answer. Astronomy, spectroscopy, chem- 
istry, and paleontology has each contributed an impor- 
tant part to the solution of this question. 

The first and most important thing recorded is the 
creation of the heaven and the earth. They are not 
pronounced good, and modern astronomy has discov- 
ered that at first, and long afterward, they were not 
good; for, originally, the heavens and earth were in a 
gas-like condition, almost infinitely attenuated and 
diffused. The nebulous matter needed to be gathered 
into sun and planets, and wrought, through innumer- 



UR EIGHTH E VENIN G. 1 79 

able ages, into manifold forms and combinations, be- 
fore it was good for man or even for plants and 
animals. 

The mysterious moving of the Spirit of God, in- 
finite in importance, is also not pronounced good, prob- 
ably because it was not a completion, but rather an act 
whose effects were to be felt to the close of creation. 

Light, however long the time from its imperfect 
beginnings in the nebulous stage to such as we now 
enjoy, became perfected before the earth had an 
opaque body, and thus divided between the liglit and 
darkness, causing day and night to begin. Accord- 
ingly, the verdict " good " precedes that division. 

The light was called day and the darkness night, 
but day and night are not called " good." Nor were 
they complete, for the earth's axis, not having then its 
present obliquity, the present charming variety from 
unequal days and nights and from changing seasons 
was yet lacking. Not till the fourth period are the 
days and seasons and other measures of time pro- 
nounced good. 

The expanse (tlie rahia) was not pronounced good, 
for in that early period, before the land appeared, it 
was foul with poisonous gases. It was not good. 

The land and sea are pronounced good because, 
as to all that affects the present population of plants 
and animals — extent and arrangement, quality of soil, 
and of ocean waters — they were finished. 



180 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

The vegetable world became fitted for its highest 
uses when grass, herbs, and fruit-trees whose seed is 
in the fruit appeared. 

The arrangement as to the two great lights, what- 
ever it was, was final and adapted to the present ani- 
mal population, and, therefore, is rightly pronounced 
" good." 

As to water creatures and fowl, and, later yet, cat- 
tle, beasts, and other living things, they crowned the 
brute creation ; nothing better fitted has been imag- 
ined. As, therefore, fitted for the final purpose, they, 
too, are styled ''good." 

When man appeared, the creation, as a material 
creation, was completed. As an instrument to be 
used for its intended purposes it was handed over to 
the father of our race. Formless matter had become 
reduced to form and solidity. Force, from a simple 
centerward impulse, had developed heat, light, chem- 
ical aflinity, and electricity ; and these had been so 
tamed down that they were ready for the service of 
man. The gaseous nebula had become solid earth ; 
the black scorise of its first surface had become soil 
full of potentialities ; the foul mixture of gases that 
once surrounded the earth had stored its poison be- 
neath the rocks in beds of coal; and there remained 
only the life-giving atmosphere. The monotonous 
sameness of the preglacial world had been succeeded 
by the present variety induced by changing seasons ; 



OUR EIGHTH EVENING. 181 

the universal ocean had given place to the present 
arrangement of land and water, with continents and 
seas, mountains and valleys, lakes and rivers ; the 
waters had been purified from their excessive amount 
of silica and lime ; the almost structureless sea-weed, 
once the only vegetation, had been followed by an 
ever-increasing breadth of development and compli- 
cation of structure until plant life culminated in the 
highest and most useful orders, the angiosperms and 
palms. Brute forms, starting in the microscopic pro- 
tozoa, had reached their highest point in living ver- 
tebrates. 

Light, land, and sea, plants, climate, water animals 
and land animals, each received a separate verdict of 
" good ; " but as to man, separately, that was not said. 
So far as the earth and its purpose were concerned all 
was completed. As a whole it received the divine 
approval in higher terms than before ; parts separately 
had been "good," but, conjoined into one harmonious 
whole, those which at lirst did not receive the meed 
of '' good," being now finished and fitted to their 
place, and man, its crowning glory, added, '^ God saw 
all " — the tout ensemble — '' that he had made, and, be- 
hold, it was very good." God, henceforth, ceased to 
create and make for our planet. It was finished and 
ready for its mission. But man was not pronounced 
"good." On that sixth day, which w^itnessed the 
highest reach of all else of God's creation, man merely 



182 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

began to be. His culmination, and only his, lay, and 
still lies, in tlie far future. 

The Professor's only reply was, " This is a most 
curious chapter." 

JSTothing more was said that evening that I care 
to repeat. We were interrupted by visitors, and did 
not take up any new matter. 

A friend w^ho read the above in manuscript wrote 
me in reference to it as follows. The reader will 
notice that he does not question my exegesis of the 
phrase, " God saw that it was good," but he is 
shocked at my saying that man, the sinless man of 
Eden, was not pronounced good. 

'' Does not ' every thing ' include man ? Is it not 
straining a point to say that man was not pronounced 
good ? In his first estate he was made in the image 
of God. How could he be better ? He might not 
remain ' good,' but he was good — perfect so far as 
creation could make him." 

My friend does not quite see my meaning. " Good," 
as used in this chapter, lias no reference to moral 
quality, since that can be predicated of nothing which 
preceded Adam. It implies only completeness, or 
culmination, or fitness for the intended use. That 
this epithet is not applied to man at all, and that 
the verdict ''very good" is applied not to him 
separately, but in connection with all that God had 
made, is a matter to be decided, not by our tradi- 



OUR EIGHTH EVENING. 183 

tional beliefs, but by the evidence of the narrative 
itself. 

The following from Professor Dana is very appro- 
priate in this connection. It sets forth, from the 
stand-point of a man most eminent in science, the 
conti-ast between man and the rest of creation in ref- 
erence to further development : 

'' Man was the first being that was not finished on 
reaching adult growth, but was provided with powers 
for infinite expansion, a will for a life of work, and 
boundless aspirations to lead to endless improvement. 
He was the first being capable of an intelligent sur- 
vey of nature and comprehension of her laws ; the 
first capable of augmenting his strength by bending 
nature to his service, rendering thereby a weak body 
stronger than all possible animal force ; the first capa- 
ble of deriving happiness from truth and goodness ; 
of apprehending eternal right ; of reaching toward a 
knowledge of self and God ; the first, therefore, capa- 
ble of conscious obedience or disobedience of a moral 
law, and the first subject to debasement through his 
appetites and a moral nature. 

"There is, then, in man a spiritual element in 
which the brute has no share. His power of infinite 
progress, his thoughts and desires that reach onward, 
even beyond time, his recognition of spiritual exist- 
ence and of a Divinity above, all evince a nature that 
partakes of the infinite and divine. . . . Unlike other 



184 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

species, he, through his spiritual nature, is far more 
intimately connected with the opening future." 

The teachings of the New Testament are, that this 
life is not a finality, but, on the contrary, only a be- 
ginning of eternal progress. In the sense of this chap- 
ter there is none good but God. He alone of spiritual 
existences is complete, has no further heights to at- 
tain, knows no possibility of progress. Paradoxical 
as it may appear, it is in this incompleteness that man 
differs from all the brute creation, and in this is his 
highest glory. 

In the course of our conversation the Professor 
jotted down the following compact statement show- 
ing the use and the omission of ''good "all through 
the account : 

Omitted after creation of heaven and earth. 

Omitted after the imparting of force or motion by 
the Spirit of God. 

Used after light was caused to be. 

Omitted after the division between light and dark- 
ness. 

Omitted after making the " firmament." 

Used after the dry land and seas were arranged. 

Used after grass, herbs, and fruit-trees appeared. 

Used after the lights were to be for seasons, etc. 

Used after water animals and birds. 

Used after land animals. 

Omitted after man. 



OUR EIGHTH EVENING. 185 

Omitted after the five most important statements, 
and used after only six. The omissions are mostly in 
the first, or preliminary, part of the account ; the use 
of " good " is chiefiy in the latter, or final, stages of 
the story. In the light of present knowledge of 
world-making this was to be expected. 



186 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 



OUR NINTH EVENING, 



THE DAYS THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT — SIX STAGES OF 

DEVELOPMENT WHAT THIS CHAPTER IS MY WAY OF 

STUDYING IT — WHY IT WAS GIVEN '' A HYMN OF CRE- 
ATION " HOW IT WAS GIVEN — A RESUM:^. 

After welcoming the Professor we began at once 
upon our theme. 

" What," said the Professor, " about the days ? Most 
persons think they present the most difBcult problem 
in the whole matter." He would like to hear my ex- 
planation more fully than I had yet given it. He 
had read several theories ; what did I think of them ? 

All the theories, I replied, may be reduced to two ; 
" the days were common, consecutive days;" "they 
were periods of unknown length." Until recently 
there was no question but that the first was the ex- 
plicit teaching of the story as well as of the fourth 
commandment. So long as it was a matter of power 
only the shortness of the time presented no difficulty. 
But when it was found that layers of rock many thou- 
sand feet thick were filled with myriads of extinct 
plants and animals following one another in successive 
'' populations " this theory was seen to involve a ques- 
tion of divine veracity. Either these forms, with all 



OUR NINTH EVENING. 187 

their organs for digesting their food and for reproduc- 
ing their kind, were counterfeits, made for no purpose 
but to deceive, or the world liad been in existence an 
enormous time. To break the force of this there was 
devised a modification of tlie theory. 

Yes, it was said, it is true ; God made all things in 
six consecutive days, common days, and it is also true 
that the world has existed for perhaps millions of 
years, and they explained the apparent discrepancy 
thus : After God had created the heavens and the 
earth there was between that act and the conditions 
described in the next sentence a stretch of time of 
whose duration no hint is given, but whicli was long 
enough for all the demands of geology. In this in- 
terval lived the plants and animals whose remains are 
found in the rocks ; and here took place the degradation 
of mountains and the erosion of valleys which now 
excite our astonishment. At last, for some unrevealed 
reason, the world was destroyed. All life went out, 
a pall of thick darkness covered the earth, and the 
seas overwhelmed the land. After a time, we know 
not how long, the Spirit of God moved upon the face 
of the waters, the clouds began to break away, and 
there was light, good indeed, but mingled with dark- 
ness; then God separated between the light and the 
darkness ; called the light day and the darkness night. 
Then darkness came down again and there was even- 
ing. Twelve hours later, the night having passed, 



188 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

the light began to re-appear and there was morning. 
On the next day the expanse was formed. Again 
the day waned, and it was evening. The night came 
on. A few hours more and there was morning, and 
that was the second day. With returning light be- 
gan the third day. It opened on a dead world buried 
in a shoreless ocean. The divine word went forth, 
and at once the fifty million square miles of land 
rose from beneath the waters. How such a mass of 
water could run off in a few hours without a yet 
greater miracle the advocates of this theory do not 
say. But it was done. Then, say at noon, all kinds 
of plants came up. That such plants might live re- 
quired a miraculous removal of the salt from what 
had been that morning an ocean bottom. But it was 
done, and that very afternoon grasses, herbs, and 
fruit-trees, to which salt was a deadly poison, abounded. 
Again the light grew dim and evening came. Night 
followed and rest, for a few hours, and then came the 
morning, and this ended the third day. Three times 
again did the divine command go forth, and all was 
done. 

This theory requires so much destroying and re- 
creating — not one quarter of the difficulties have been 
mentioned — such a heaping of miracles upon miracles, 
that few now accept it. 

Dr. Pye Smith offered an amendment. He thinks 
that Genesis refers merely to a local creation in west- 



OUR NINTH EVENING, 189 

ern Asia. This, if possible, is still more unsatisfac- 
tory. 

The theory which regards the "days" as periods 
finds most favor with those who have enough knowl- 
edge of geology to appreciate the. difficulties of the 
six consecutive days. Some, however, find themselves 
perplexed because the fourth commandment seems to 
support the belief that the "days" were common 
days. A careful study of the decalogue will, I think, 
relieve their minds. 

In reading the commandments one is struck with 
a certain peculiarity running through them all. It 
consists in the frequent use of that figure of speech 
called synecdoche — that is, putting a part for the 
whole. Thus : " Thou shalt not kill " names but one 
crime, but forbids all offenses against the person. 
" Thou shalt not commit adultery " names only one act, 
but forbids all impurity. " Thou shalt not steal " for- 
bids not theft alone, but all dishonesty. And so I 
might go through the list ; every-where a single act 
is mentioned while a whole series is meant. In the 
same way six days stand for six stretches of time. 
The word " days" evidently is figurative in the fourth 
commandment, and I see no insurmountable objec- 
tion to regarding it as figurative in the first chapter 
of Genesis. But such a meaning appears out of har- 
mony with the intense literalism that pervades the 
account. For this reason, and because I thus follow 



190 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

more closely the exact statements of tlie writer, I 
prefer to regard the days as common days which serve 
to mark the end of the creative periods. 

Perhaps a homely illustration may help make the 
matter clearer. Suppose I wislied to make for my 
child a brief epitome of our country's history, and, 
furthermore, that I had no system of chronology, 
yet washed to impress upon him the order. I might 
number the days on wliich certain important events 
occurred, or which served to mark the end of one 
stage and the beginning of the next, somewhat as 
follows : 

The Indians, undisturbed and unheard of, held 
America till Columbus discovered it, on day the 
first. 

Only Spaniards and French sought to make settle- 
ment till Jamestown was founded, on day the second. 

There was strife between English and French until 
Quebec was taken, on day the third. 

Our people remained subject to England till Dec- 
laration of Independence, on day the fourth. 

There was a time of weakness and disorder till 
the present Constitution was adopted, on day the fifth. 

There was struggle between liberty and slavery till 
Lee surrendered, on day the sixth. 

Here is a series of daj' s separating important stages 
in the history of our country. There would be no 
impropriety in my afterw^ard saying that in some 



OUR NINTH EVENING. 191 



relation to this hexad of days (''six of days")^ God, 
in his providence, built up this nation. And as these 
days differed in no respect from others, neither did 
those of Genesis. The former divide our history 
into periods of whose length my little epitome gives 
no intimation, and the latter do the same for the 
early history of the vi^orld. 

" You speak," said the Professor, " of six divisions, 
or stages, in the world's history. I have always un- 
derstood that such divisions could not be made with- 
out clashing with modern science. Can six sections 
be made that do not run into each other ? " 

I replied that as to the first three periods enough 
was known to show tliat the demarkation between 
them is sharp and distinct. As to the fourth, tlie 
line is sharp, although as to what then occurred 
scientists are as yet in doubt. Betw^een the fifth and 
sixth periods the line, although not sharply drawn, is 
tolerably distinct. I would give the divisions as 
follows : 

1. The first stage — astronomers would call it the 
Nebulous — begins at the '' beginning." It includes the 
creation of matter, the imparting of motion, the pro- 
duction of light, and the reduction of the temperature 
of the earth's crust to a point at which it ceased to 
emit light. It ends at the first day and night on our 

* In tlie Hebrew it is " a six of days," that is, ** a hexad of days." 
The preposition in is not in the original. 
13 



192 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

planet. Here the line is well drawn, for since that 
first day and night there has been no creation of matter 
or of force, and no change in the quality of the light. 

2. The next stage commenced after day and niglit 
had begun — that is, after the end of the first stage. 
Its work was the condensation and deposition of tlie 
vapors due to the yet hot earth, and the consequent 
clearing of the atmosphere. It ended when the air 
becam.e so clear that the expanse could be called 
"heaven," and in it the heavenly bodies be seen. 

This stage does not lap either way, for its work 
could not have gone on before the " first day," because 
the earth was then too hot, and, once done, it has never 
needed to be repeated. 

Geology styles this the Azoic age, or, as to the lat- 
ter part of it, the Archaean. It might be called the 
Pluvial stage. 

3. The work of the third stage was the elevation 
of the land above the seas, the purification of the w^a- 
ters, the preparation of the soil, and the production 
of grasses, herbs, and fruit-trees. 

This stage did not begin (could not begin) till 
after the previous one was ended ; and it was ended, 
so geologists say, before the close of the tertiary. 

In its time-limits it reaches from the earliest 
archsean to the time just before the glaciers. Since 
then nothing of importance lias been done in either 
direction. There w^as no lapping on to the next. 



OUR NINTH EVENING, 193 

4. The fourth stage witnessed the introduction of 
the modern type of climate, with seasons and unequal 
days and nights. ISo such type existed before the 
pliocene. Then came the glacial epocli. Since that 
time no change in reference to seasons and unequal 
days and nights has occurred. 

5. The fifth stage witnessed the production of living 
species of water creatures (fish and other vertebrates) 
and fowl. Whatever may have come down from the 
earlier days, there was addition of now living species 
after that climatic change. This, which corresponds 
to the quaternary period, is a well-defined epoch of 
development of present marine vertebrate animals 
and of present birds. So far as science knows, none 
have been added since. 

6. The sixth stage is equivalent to the recent pe- 
riod, and comes down to the time of Adam. It wit- 
nessed the production of present cattle, beasts, and 
other land creatures. According to Professor Dana, 
almost none of these go back into the Champlain 
period.^ 

The Professor made no reply to' this except to re- 
mark that the geological record since the pliocene was 
so unsatisfactory he had very great doubt whether 
we could at present draw a line between the last two 
periods. Science shows the existence of a pretty 

* "The mammals of the quaternary are nearly all extinct." — Man- 
ual of Geology, p. 563. 



194 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

well-defined demarkation between the land fauna of 
the quaternary and that of to-daj. This is as far, per- 
haps, as we can at present venture to speak with any 
positiveness. 

The Professor sat a few moments in silence, and 
then said : '' This is a very different document from 
what I have always supposed. But old beliefs are 
not easily thrown off, and I can hardly say that I ac- 
cept it as true. The argument seems conclusive, but 
I am dazed by the greatness of the results if it be 
actually true. It is too great to be believedo 1 do 
not wish to argue to-night, but only to listeUo Tell 
me just how this story looks to you. What is it? 
How did you come to view it as you do ? I shall 
wish to ask other questions, but please answer these 
first." 

Whatever I can say is liable to imperfection and 
error, for my knowledge is very limited. If, upon 
more thorough examination, defects shall be found in 
my exposition, you must not, therefore, draw conclu- 
sions unfavorable to the truth of this narrative. Too 
many real correspondences have been pointed out be- 
tween it and what scientists have claimed as their dis- 
coveries to permit it to be lightly regarded. I know, 
too — no one can be more sensible of it than I — that 
its depths have not all been sounded, nor all its 
heights been scaled. Others, with greater knowledge 
of the Hebrew" and with the help of a more advanced 



OUR NINTH EVENING. 195 

science, will find treasures beyond my reach. Of 
some, even now, I catch tantalizing glimpses. - And 
then, too, the discussion of the three last periods lacks 
that full and satisfactory character which can come 
only when geologists have given us — if that shall ever 
be possible — a full and connected account of what 
took place between the end of the pliocene and tlie 
beginning of history. At present, amid abundant 
assertions, our knowledge is very meager, both as to 
the things done and their causes. 

You ask me how I look upon this chapter. To 
me it appears to be a series of statements, each setting 
forth an event, or condition, or transaction, in the 
world's early history. These I find placed one after 
the other in the true order, but with no intimation of 
the vast intervals of time by which they are sepa- 
rated. As, when we look at the stars, they all seem 
equally distant, and we learn better only from the 
teachings of astronomy, so to the ordinary reader all 
these transactions seem equally distant until a greater 
acquaintance with the past teaches him better. 

Of some things, as light, matter, and motion, the 
writer speaks of their beginnings, while as to others 
he records only their completion. Of plants he 
speaks only of the latest and most useful kinds ; of 
animals he confines himself to living species. Not a 
few of his statements are of such a character that on 
their truth depends the very existence of whole de- 



196 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

partments of modern science. Nor is their great 
Yalue nor tlieir order a matter of accident. For the 
number of these statements compels the belief that 
they were designed. With a slight verbal change, 
making diametrically opposite sense, I adopt the 
words of one to whom I owe so much,"^ " The Mosaic 
story is the work of a profound intellect versed in all 
the depths of science which the future was to reveal," 
if indeed it be not the perfection of irony to speak 
of the depths of human knowledge in His presence 
who seems to me to be the Author of the acconnt. 

" How did yon arrive at yonr belief in this narra- 
tive? You certainly did not start with it. What 
course did you pursue ? " 

No, I replied, I did not start with it, for when 
I began to study this chapter I had no clearly formed 
opinions about it, except that if it was from God it 
would bear comparison with the most advanced 
science, so far as the two treated of the same subjects ; 
or, as Dr. Draper so admirably puts it in his Intellect- 
ual Development of Europe — I repeat the quotation : 
" Considering the asserted origin of this book " — he is 
speaking of the Koran, but his words apply equally 
well to any book claiming to be a revelation — ''indi- 
rectly from God himself — we might justly expect 
that it would bear to be tried by any standard that 

* So much as to the world's history, but nothing as to the explana- 
tion of this chapter. 



OUR NINTH EVENING. 197 

man can apply, and vindicate its truth and ex- 
cellence in the ordeal of human criticism. . . . As 
years pass on, and human science becomes more ex- 
act and more comprehensive, its conclusions must be 
found in unison therewith. When occasion arises it 
should furnish us at least the foreshadowing of the 
great truths discovered by astronomy and geology, 
not offering for them the wild fictions of earlier ages, 
inventions of the infancy of man." 

It makes no difference that Dr. Draper thought he 
was setting so high a standard that it would render 
the claims of the Bible ridiculous. I thank him that 
he has done so, and trust that he and his co-believers 
will say no more about the absurdity of looking, in 
what claims to be a revelation, for the foreshadow- 
ing of great truths discovered by astronomy and 
geology. According to him, such looking for scien- 
tific truths is the proper mode of testing such a 
claim. These high demands of the learned doctor 
absolutely require the Bible, if it really be a revela- 
tion, to disagree with the conclusions of science 
through all of what may be called its formative stages ; 
hence, to disagree w4tli the science of the world 
almost to the present day, and where science is yet 
formative — and consequently, of necessity, largely 
erroneous — we must, on Dr. Draper's showing, still 
look for disagreement. I need hardly say that the 
history of the past shows a refusal on the part of the 



J9S GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

Bible to agree with the current science, and this, to 
my mind, is no small argument in favor of its super- 
human origin. 

But, to return to your question. Heartily agreeing 
with Dr. Draper as to what a revealed cosmogony 
would do, I concluded to see how far the one wliich 
we have been discussing would bear his test. I de- 
termined to drop all a priori notions as to what a 
revelation could or could not do. All theories, tlius 
far, had proceeded upon the assumption that there 
was some great defect, or impassable limit, eitlier in 
the knowledge of the writer or in his fear of going 
beyond the capacity of his countrymen. I thought 
to try another theory, to wit, that, God being the real 
author, I need have no fears that our science would 
overstep his, and, therefore, dropping all limits other 
than he had placed on the record, I determined to take 
his words in their fullest and freest amplitude of 
meaning. 

I first spread out before me, as on a great chart, 
the discoveries of astronomers, geologists, and others, 
pertaining to the early history of our earth. Then 
I took up the statements in this story of creation, 
and looked on my chart for something to which 
they exactly corresponded. I made no account of 
previous beliefs or theories, asked no questions as 
to time or order, or whether Moses meant it or not ; 
1 just looked for counterparts of his brief descrip- 



UE NINTH E VENING. 199 

tions. When I found one I placed by it the words 
of Moses, and then passed on. I will not trouble you 
with an account of my easy success in some cases, 
nor of my long and, for a time, unsuccessful but 
never wearisome search in others, and my finding 
diamonds in what seemed valueless pebbles, the 
glorious flashes of liglit by which my path was often 
illumined, nor of failures sometimes to make any 
progress — failures due, as it turned out, to my igno- 
rance of some physical fact, or else to my following a 
version which led me away from the Hebrew original. 

At last I had each statement placed, and then, look- 
ing over the whole, to my delight I found that their 
order on the chart was exactly that in which Moses 
had left them. That the story was true was as cer- 
tain as the truth of the sciences which verified it ; 
that its order was correct was equally beyond ques- 
tion ; til at it was not an allegory was evident, for 
there by its side was a physical fact for each sentence. 

"I have of ten wondered," said the Professor, '^how 
you came to be so decided in your belief. But with 
the experience you have been through I do not see how 
it could be otherwise. I have read various statements 
as to what was God's purpose in giving this account 
to man. I must confess I never felt much interest in 
the matter, because it seemed to me the writers were 
trying to devise something which should enable them 
to escape from some of their many assailants ; but 



200 GENESIS J. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

now I feel very differently. Tell me what, so far as 
you can judge, was the purpose of its author in giv- 
ino; this account to man ? " 

I think I can see several purposes. One — the chief 
— to set forth God's creatorship, and to impress upon 
mankind the Sabbath as a perpetual reminder of that 
fact ; another, to make manifest God's intense per- 
sonality, as distinguished from blind force ; and last, 
but possibly not least, to authenticate to future ages, 
when knowledge should have been increased, the high 
origin of that book of which it is the opening chapter. 

I have already pointed out the broadness of the 
claim to universal creatorship here put forth. It 
shows itself all through the chapter, but perhaps more 
noticeably in reference to animal life. The fiat com- 
mands certain kinds of creatures to appear. The 
record says that it was done, and then adds that God 
created not these alone, but " every living " creature, 
not merely those that came into existence then, but 
all living kinds ; thus foreshadowing the fact lately 
discovered that many living creatures at these epochs 
had come down from earlier times. 

The narrative impresses on man the Sabbath as a 
day of rest by dividing the history into six periods of 
work and then placing at the close a day of rest. If 
the Sabbath had thenceforward been observed for the 
reason assigned in the fourth commandment the wor- 
ship of false gods would have been impossible. 



OUR NINTH EVENING, 201 

God's personality shows itself in such phrases as 
" God said," or " God saw," or " God made." So 
tlioronghly is this thought wrought into the story 
that it refuses to be read in any other sense. Let any 
one attempt to substitute for God some other word, 
for example, force. He will get through but few lines 
before he will be compelled to feel that it is no abstrac- 
tion, but a living person, of whom he is reading. I 
hope you will make the experiment at your leisure 
and go through the chapter. I will repeat a few verses 
which suffice for my present purpose. 

" In the beginning force created the heaven and 
the earth. And tlie earth was without form, and void ; 
and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And 
the spirit of force moved upon the face of the waters. 
And force said, Let there be light : and there was 
light. And force saw the light, that it was good : 
and force divided between the light and the darkness. 
And force called the light Day, and the darkness 
he called Night." 

We have gone through but a few lines. Plainly 
" force " is a person that thinks, wills, approves, and 
names. We feel tliat in writing " force " we have been 
guilty of disrespect, and that at the least it should be 
Force. This does not satisfy us, and we hasten back 
to that word which expresses infinite force with per- 
fect personality, God. 

I said this story authenticates the Bible. It does 



202 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE, 

it bj the exhibition of so much knowledge which, 
until the present time, was unattainable bj man. 
It reaches from the " beginning" to Adam. Of 
necessity it passes in silence over vast stretches of 
time in which occurred many events of great impor- 
tance, or what is now a chapter would have been 
swelled to a vast number of volumes, and thus the 
utility of the book as the companion and comforter of 
man would have been destroyed. It seems incred- 
ible, but it is a fact, that these omissions have been 
urged as a strong if not conclusive reason for reject- 
ing the claim of this chapter to be inspired. The 
folly of such reasoning is surpassed only by its pre- 
sumption. 

To this the Professor made no reply, but remarked : 
^^The world has always supposed Moses referred to 
events which occurred six thousand years ago. I 
admit that he does not say so, nor does he say any 
thing to the contrary. He is merely silent. Now, 
what right have you to say that he refers to matters a 
thousand-fold more distant ? Then, too, the story 
moves on apparently without break from day to day 
from the first to the last ; what right have you to 
separate statements so joined, and to place between 
them intervals of thousands, if not millions, of 
years ? I do not ask to argue, but I really w^sh to 
know?" 

The world's opinion has always been a very unsafe 



UR NINTH E VENING, 203 

guide in any matters pertaining to our earth or its 
history, whether in the Bible or out of it. 

Moses leaves the time of the beginning of crea- 
tion an open question. He merely states certain 
things, with no intimation as to how much or how 
little time separates them. This is a fact of great im- 
portance, but one exceedingly difficult to realize, 
because it requires us to rid ourselves of beliefs which 
Lave been held from childhood. His narrative, when 
collated with astronomy and geology, agrees, each 
statement with a fact throughout, and what, if possible, 
is more marvelous, the order is the same. These 
agreements are many in number and of the most 
profound importance. Such and so many agree- 
ments could not be mere chance coincidences. Hence 
I conclude that this narrative was intended to de- 
scribe the very transactions to which it so exactly 
applies. The laws of my mental being allow me no 
other conclusion. Ergo^ it was intended to extend 
over all the time which the transactions occupied. 
Astronomy and geology assure us that these were 
separated by intervals of unequal length aggregating 
untold millions of years. The account itself says 
nothing for or against there being such intervals. 
Agreeing, as it does, in all else with the broadest 
science, we would stultify ourselves to say that silence 
is contradiction. The case is very similar to that of 
the little skeleton outline of American historv which 



204 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

I employed in illustration of the ''days." The child 
who read it without other instruction might, perhaps, 
believe it the story of a week ; but when, in after years, 
he 'learned from other sources that it in reality spread 
over several centuries, he would need to be an uncom- 
monly stupid child to insist that its author taught that 
the events which it mentions followed each other with 
no greater interval than a night. 

" But," said the Professor, '' is not this often styled 
a Hymn of Creation?" 

Yes ; and I see no great objection to it. A hynm 
may be true as much as if it were prose. We may 
imagine that at some remote time — perhaps before the 
flood — there lived one who believed with all his heart in 
one God, Creator of all things. We can think of him 
as meditating on the heavens, and the earth with its 
teeming population, till his thoughts took form in 
words. His theme would be God, Creator of heaven 
and earth, and in loving detail we can imagine him go- 
ing through the catalogue of God's works in some such 
outline as this, but amplified in working out the poem : 

In the beginning G-od created heaven and earth. 

God made the light, and separated it from the darkness, and called 

the one Day and the other Night. 
God made the expanse over all. 

God made the dry land appear, and the waters to fill the seas. 
God made the grass, the herbs, and the fruit-bearing trees. 
God caused the lights in the expanse of heaven to be for signs, and 

for seasons, and for days, and for years. 
God made them also, and caused them to shine for man ; he made 

the stars likewise. 



OUR NINTH EVENING. 205 

God made great whales and other creatures of the sea. 

And fowl to fly in the expanse of heaven. 

God made the cattle, beasts, and other living beings that move upon 

the land. 
God made man. In the image of God made he him. 

At first it would not appear impossible that some 
uninspired man might have written such a poem. It 
would excite our surprise tliat wliile all other cosmog- 
onies abound in monstrous polytheistic fables this 
is wholly free. Had we lived before the present 
century, we might have wondered that the writer, if 
inspired by the All- Wise, should have been so igno- 
rant of true science as to represent the earth as 
once tohu va iohu, " infinitely attenuated, nothingness, 
and void;" and that he should say light existed 
before the sun, and was called good, before it was 
divided from the darkness. We might have insisted, 
as did the philosophers of early days, that whatever 
Tokia might mean in itself it mnst here have been in- 
tended to describe a solid support for the waters above 
the earth ; for surely the writer, if inspired, mnst have 
known about the crystalline spheres which every tyro 
in "science" knew supported the vast upper stores 
of water. And, as of all things perhaps the most 
important was the firmament which kept the waters 
from descending and drowning out all life, we would 
have thought, as did the scientists atnong the trans- 
lators of the Septuagint, that it was by an oversi^'lit 
that the firmament was not called good. Of course 



206 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

it was good, and the author of the account must have 
intended to so call it, and therefore we should have 
approved of their interpolating the words, " And God 
saw that it was good." 

Then, in regard to the fourth period, we should 
have had several faults to find, but chiefly that the 
poet ignored weeks and months ; and when we came 
to the next period it would seem strange and very 
unscientific that birds should have appeared simul- 
taneously with water creatures rather than with land 
animals. In fact, orthodox scientists had a hard time 
of it till they began to know something of the world's 
real history. It was not the order that troubled them, 
for, so far as they could see, one order was as good as 
another. jS^aturally grass came before cattle, but why 
it came before whales they could not see, and did not 
imagine it was a matter of any consequence. 

Calling light good while it was, as they thought, 
mingled with darkness was a little singular, but it 
did not make any difference. Perhaps the reason the 
firmament was not pronounced good was that the 
devils were made on that day.* 

To-day we have a very different science, and no 
longer is it necessary to do violence to the dictionary 
to eke out a harmony between it and the story in 
Genesis. The physical statements in the latter readily 
find their counterpart in the world's history. And if 
* See commentary in Luther's Bible on this omission. 



OUR NINTH EVENING. 207 

these are chance agreements there remains the greater 
miracle, the correct order. There are here a large 
numbei* of important points in which this story touches 
modern science, yet every-where the order is the true 
one. It is this above all else that proves this story is 
from some higher source than an unaided man. 

"How," said the Professor, "do you think this 
story was made known to Moses, or w^hoever wrote 
it ? Was it put bodily into his mind, or did he see 
the transactions as in a vision ? " 

Since nothing has been revealed as to the mode of 
Moses's obtaining this account, all that I can say is en- 
titled to little weight. Very much which he has re- 
corded could in the nature of ihe, case have been made 
known to him only by actual words, either spoken or 
in some manner pnt into his mind. For example, the 
first two verses — no vision could depict what they 
record. Even now, with the aid of our greatly 
increased knowledge, we can conjm-e up nothing better 
to represent God the Creator, or God the Spirit, the 
darkness, and the moving upon the waters, than certain 
conventional symbols which w^ould have had no mean- 
ing to Moses and his contemporaries. 

Then there is all that God is represented as say- 
ing. This, too, could be conveyed to Moses only 
through tlie medium of words, and it forms a large 
part of the narrative. 

Besides all this, I continued, there is internal ev^- 



208 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

idence that the author of this account had the skill 
and knowledge of a trained observer — a kind of per- 
son unknown in those days and not very common now. 
Every one who has had experience in obtaining de- 
scriptions of natural phenomena from ordinary persons 
knows how exceedingly diflScult it is to get them to 
exclude useless and extraneous matters. Knowing 
little of the relative vahie of the facts which they have 
witnessed, they are likely to record those of no conse- 
quence and to omit others of the highest value. But 
here, in this series of phenomenal descriptions, every 
word is appropriate, every fact of transcendent im- 
portance. There is, too, an evident freedom and vi- 
vacity, a lack of doubt or hesitation, as if error was 
impossible, which can be justified only by the truth 
of every statement. I cannot conceive of any man 
viewing the past and selecting such facts and describ- 
ing them in language so exact. The only conclusion 
that appears to meet all the conditions of the problem 
is that this narrative was received from a supernatural 
source. There may, or there may not, have been an 
audible sound. Perhaps words were unconsciously 
put into the mind of Moses. But in some way he 
knew just what words to use. 

I then spoke of Professor Huxley's remark, '' Tlie 
student of nature will trouble himself no longer with 
these theologies," and asked what he thought of it, in 
view of what we had seen as we went over the account. 



OUR NINTH EVENING. 209 

He replied: "Unless Professor Huxley shall ex- 
plain away the facts — and I do not see how he can — he 
is bound as a fair-minded man to recall his words. I 
have no doubt that, with his usual acuteness and that 
freedom from all theological bias which he claims for 
himself, he will examine the matter thoroughly, and 
either make the amende Jionorahle as frankly as he has 
made his charges, or else he will point out just what 
it is in this story that is contradicted by science.^ If 
he will not do this I shall think that his opposition 
to this part of the Bible arises, not from a love of the 
truth, but from some other motive. In sucli a case I 
shall look to that eminent scientist. Dr. Draper. He 
certainly should be able to point out the contradictions 
of science, if there are any, because he has made a 
study of what he calls the conflict of religion and sci- 
ence. Until that is done I shall venture to believe 
that no such conflict exists.f 

"Either of these gentlemen could greatly aid in 
settling this question if he w^ould write out his own 
version of our world's history in language as brief and 
simple as that of Moses, omitting every thing about 

*In the Nineteenth Century Professor Huxley shows that what he 
calls the central idea of this account is an error; but as that 
"idea" is not taught in Genesis, it is still in order to ask the Pro- 
fessor to point out something; in this story which is contradicted by 
science. 

f Since the above was written Dr. Draper has died. I let the pas- 
sage stand, hoping that he on whom his mantle shall fall will in this 
matter take his place. 



210 GENESIS J. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

which scientists are still disputing. An account made 
up of admitted facts, placed in their true order by 
such men, would be most welcome. But I fear it 
will never be written." 

With this we ended our discussion, in a very differ- 
ent spirit on his part from that in which it had begun. 

A few days later my friend removed to a distant 
part of the country. I liave met him several times 
since, and we have discussed a number of questions 
about the Bible ; but, whatever doubts he may ex- 
press as to other matters, he no longer denies that at 
least one chapter is true, and is inexplicable on any 
theory that assumes its human origin. At his request 
I prepared and sent him the following ej^itome of the 
teachings of Genesis : 

The universe is not eternal, for God created it. 

The earth was once formless — that is, part of a neb- 
ulous mass, and had neither land nor seas, plants nor 
animals — " void." At first it was non-solid, mobile, 
easily flowing, mahyim. And darkness covered it. 

After motion was imparted by the Spirit of God 
there was light. The light became good light before 
there were days and nights. 

After days and nights had begun there was an ex- 
panse, or thinning, made in the midst of the dense at- 
mosphere of steam and clouds which at first envel- 
oped the earth. The expanse was not yet fitted for 
higher forms of life — not " good." 



UR NINTH E YENING, 21 1 

After the waters were deposited under the expanse, 
the earth was covered with water, beneath which lay 
tlie future continents. The seas and oceans are one 
great basin — '^ one place." 

Of the vast geological periods from the beginning 
of the emergence of the land till both land and sea 
could be pronounced ready, or '^good" for their in- 
tended purpose, all is passed over without notice. 

In the rest of the account the writer speaks of 
things the Hebrews knew of and were interested in, 
the contemporary plants and animals, and the sun and 
moon and stars, the various measures of time, and of 
Adam, their great progenitor. Moses says God made 
all these, and to the Hebrews that was the only mat- 
ter of moment about it. But from a scientific stand- 
point the most interesting thing is the order in w^hich 
Moses says God made them. 

Genesis puts the modern flora first, not of all organ- 
isms, but of the three '4iorizons" of which he speaks. 

Next come the arrangements by which the great 
lights were to divide between the day and the night, 
and were to be for times and for seasons, and for days 
and years. 

Still later come great whales and other living kinds 
of water animals and fowl. 

Then come cattle, beasts, and other living land 
creatures, and lastly Adam. 

I added a list of " errors " often charged to this 



212 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

story unjustly, being for the most part somebody's 
inferences or false science interpolated, perhaps un- 
consciously, into the account : " The universe was made 
six thousand years ago." " Light and darkness are 
substances." " There is a solid dome or arch above 
the earth." "The sun and moon are supported by 
that arch." '^ The earth is the largest body in the 
universe." " The continents and seas were made in 
a few hours." " These were all completed before any 
plants or animals existed." " There were no plants 
or animals before grasses, herbs, and fruit-trees." 
" The sun was created after these plants." " The 
earth is larger than the sun or the stars." " There 
was no animal life on land, or in the water, before 
whales and birds." " There were no land animals 
before cattle, beasts, and other living creatures." 
" There were no men before Adam." 

Not one of these statements is found in this ac- 
count. Each is merely an inference by somebody from 
what he thinks Moses meant. Mostly they are bare 
interpolations. As to the last, it is more than doubt- 
ful whether men existed before Adam, but, in any 
case, nothing is said about it. The other statements 
have been refuted again and again, and yet each time 
the opponents of revelation had congratulated them- 
selves that it had received a fatal blow. The last success 
in this direction is Professor Huxley's in the Nineteenth 
Century^ where he tells Mr. Gladstone that there 



OUR NINTH EVENING. 218 

were water creatures before whales, flying creatures 
before birds, and, he might have added, vegetation 
before grasses, herbs, and fruit-trees. 

But as Genesis says nothing to the contrary it is 
difficult to see what bearing the Professor's article has 
on this chapter. 



214 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 



DR. DRAPER'S TEST. 



WHAT OF MODERN DISCOVERIES ARE FORESHADOWED T^ 
THE HEBREW STORY OF CREATION. 

1. It states distinctly that tlie universe liad a be- 
ginning, thus anticipating the result of Professor 
Tait's law of " Degradation of Energy." 

2. That the heaven and earth were not created all 
finished. It states distinctly three most important 
characteristics of the earth's primordial condition. The 
earth was, it says, tohu ^ va hohu^ rendered in our ver- 
sion, "without form and void;" it was a non-solid or 
iiuid substance; it was a profound abyss. These fore- 
shadow the nebular hypothesis. 

3. It says that light was not eternal, nor self-exist- 
ent, and that darkness preceded motion. It thus fore- 
shadows the modern discovery that light is a mode 
of motion, and that late generalization, the correlation 
of forces. 

4. It states explicitly that matter and motion are 
each due to the will of the First Cause. It thus fore- 
shadows the results of the highest modern philosophy. 

* No word in our language can do justice to tlie exquisite exactness 
of^ tohu as applied to the infinitely attenuated matter out of which the 
earth was formed. See page 43, this book. 



DR, DRAPER'S TEST. 215 

5. It foreshadows what modern physicists look upon 
as their discovery. That light is older than the sun. 

6. It foreshadows the fact discovered by the spec- 
troscope, that nebulous light became the same as 
solar light (that is, good) before day and night began 
their alternations. 

7. It intimates very plainly that after tlie earth 
had so cooled as to have days and nights, it was 
wrapped in dense aqueous vapor. 

8. It more than foreshadows the recent discovery 
by paleo-chemists, that at first the atmosphere was 
poisonous with foul gases — was not good. 

9. It teaches what is a very recent discovery, that 
originally the water covered what is now dry land. 

10. It more than foreshadows the great geograph- 
ical discovery of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 
that the oceans and seas form one great basin. 

11. It more than foreshadow^s the true order of 
development of the organic forms which are con- 
temporaneous w^ith man. 

12. It foreshadows an important and recent geo- 
logical discovery when it places the present flora after 
the completion of tlie oceans and continents, 

13. And before the present vertebrate fauna of the 
ocean, 

14. And before the fowls of the air. 

15. It foreshadows something yet to be made 
known — probably, as it seems to me, tlie introduction 



216 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

of seasons and unequal days and nights. Three geo- 
logical facts in harmony with this are known : 

(1) The earlier and by far the larger part of the 
world's history shows no evidence of seasons. 

(2) An immense and all-important climatic change 
after the production of present genera of plants. 

(3) The glacial epoch having passed, there is thence- 
forth abundant evidence of seasons with all that that 
implies. 

16. It foreshadows the geological fact that the higher 
kinds of water creatures and fowl — those now living 
— are of one " horizon," ^ and that they preceded the 
"horizon" of cattle, beasts, and other creatures of 
to-day. 

17. It foreshadows the failure, at least thus far, of 
scientists to discover any classes, orders, famihes, or 
genera of plants or vertebrate animals whose origin is 
more recent than the six thousand or ten thousand 
years, or whatever it may be, since present cattle and 
beasts appeared. The birds and beasts carved or 
painted on the Egyptian monuments are fac-similes of 
the birds and beasts there to-day. 

If any document by any scientist, ancient or mod- 
ern, can be found "foreshadowing" equal to this, I 
would like to see it. 

* " Of the same horizon is said of fossils which appear to have 
lived at the same tirae." 



THE TRADITIONAL STORY OF CREATION. 217 



THE TRADITIONAL STORY OF CREATION, 



SUPPOSED TO BE FOUND IN GENESIS, CHAPTER I. 

In the following paraphrase I have endeavored to 
set forth, briefly and clearly, what is usually regarded 
as the explicit teachings of the first chapter of Gene- 
sis, and accepted as such by friends and foes. Re- 
cently, however, its friends have abandoned the six 
thousand year date of creation, and most of them have 
adopted the belief that the days here spoken of were 
great periods, and tliat ^'firmament" is a mistranslation. 
One change in the order I have adopted, because " the 
science" of the best-informed of say fifty years ago ap- 
proved of it, not formally, indeed, but logically. I 
refer to the light's being good ccfter it was divided 
from the darkness. It will be seen that I have con- 
densed and omitted in order to save space and avoid 
repetitions ; but in no case have I done so where it 
would affect, pro or coUj the account. 

The traditional Genesis has been the object of the 
attacks based upon the " mistakes " of Moses, and it is 
here that the opponents of revelation have won their 
victories. In direct violation of the "scientific 
method," they assume that these second-hand state- 
ments are the teacliin2;s of tliis account, and wlien 



218 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

they have demolished what somebody says Moses in- 
tended to say, they shout in triiinjph that the student 
of nature will no longer trouble himself with these 
theologies. 

In the beginning, about 6,000 ^ years ago, God created the heavens 
and the earth, out of nothing. ^ 

And the earth was a chaotic mass, without law or order.^ 

And God made the substance ^ darkness, and it covered the deep. 

And ihe Spirit of God moved upon the face of the shoreless water.* 

And God made the light-substance,^ 

And the light and the darkness were mixed one with the other, ^ 
until God divided the light from the darkness. 

And after this division God saw the light, that it was good."^ 

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. 

And all this was done in one day — the first day.^ 

And God made a solid, transparent dome over the earth, to support 
the upper waters and to separate them from the waters beneath.^ 

And this, too, was good.^^ 

And the firmament was made in one day — the second day.^^ 

And God said, Let the waters be gathered unto one place and let 
the dry land appear. 

And, at once, it was done.^* 

^ Genesis says nothing of 6,000 years. 

2 Not so stated in Genesis. 

2 Genesis does not say darkness was a substance. 

^ Genesis says, " on the face of " mahyim^ something not solid, the 
exact equivalent of our word '• fluid." It does not say " shoreless." 

^ Genesis nowhere says or implies that light is a substance. 

^ Genesis does not say that the light and darkness were mixed. 
They were, indeed, divided, as they are now, by the opaque earth. 

■^ Genesis puts "good" before the division. So does science. 

^ Genesis merely announces after the work a day — the first — but 
does not say any thing was done in it. 

^ Genesis says nothing of any solid support. It speaks only of an 
" expanse." 

^^ Not so pronounced in Genesis. ^^ See note 8. 

^2 Genesis does not say it was done in a moment, nor in what time. 



THE TRADITIONAL STORY OF CREATION. 219 

The sea and the land, in a few hours, were completed in all their 
present extent. ^ 

And God saw that it was good. 

But as yet God had made no plants nor animals of any kind.'^ 

And God said. Let the earth send forth its first vegetation,^ 
namely, grasses, herbs, and fruit-trees bearing fruit whose seed is in 
it. And it was so. 

And first of all plants'* appeared grasses, herbs, and fruit-trees, and 
clothed the hitherto naked earth. 

And God saw that it was good. 

And all this was done on one day ^ — the third day. 

But as yet the sun, moon, and stars were not in existence,^ and 
there were no water '^ creatures, nor fowl,^ nor land animals.^ 

And God said, Let there now be made great lights in the firma- 
ment of heaven, ^^ and let them divide the day from the night, and let 
them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for months ^^ 
and years. 

And God made the sun and moon and the stars all at this time.^^ 

And all this was done on one day ^^ — the fourth. 

And as yet God had not made any living creatures — either in the 
water, or in the air, or on the land.^^ 

But now animals — the first kinds on our globe — appeared, to wit, 
great whales and other water creatures and fowV^ but as yet no land 
animals. ^^ 

^ Genesis does not say so. ^ Genesis does not say so. 

2 Genesis does not say this was the first vegetation. 

^ Genesis does not say so. ^ Genesis does not say so. 

^ Genesis does not say so. ' Genesis does not say so. 

^ Genesis does not say so. 

^ Genesis does not say so. 
^^ Genesis does not say so. 
^^ Genesis does not speak of months. 
^2 Genesis does not say so. 
13 See note 8. 

^* Genesis says nothing as to whether God had previously made 
any animal. 

^^ Genesis says nothing as to these being the first animals on the 
earth. 

^^ Genesis does not say so. 



220 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

And all these were created in one day — the fifth. ^ 
And God said, Let now the first land animals appear, and let land 
life now begin in cattle, beasts, and creeping things.^ 

Thus far in the story almost every thing has been 
falsified by traditional beliefs. The rest of the ac- 
count has not been affected in this way. 

^ See note 8. 

^ Genesis says nothing of these being the first. 



THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF CREATION 221 



THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF CREATION.* 



IS IT THE ORIGIJ^AL OF THE STORY IN THE FIRST CHAP- 
TER OF GENESIS? 

Among the interestins: "finds" on the banks of the 
Tigris are tablets which are said to contain the origi- 
nal of the Hebrew account of the creation, tlie fall, 
and the deluge. As to the last, there can be no doubt 
that the tablets give a distorted version of that great 
cataclysm. This is not surprising. The comparative 
nearness of the event accounts for the accuracy of 
some of the details. As to the fall, Professor Sayce, 
in his revised edition of Mr. George Smith's Chal- 
dean Genesis^ says : " No Chaldean legend of the 
fall has been found." Whether Professor Sayce is 
right Assyriologists must decide. The sole question 
I propose to consider is this : Whatever may or may 
not be true as to other matters, did the Hebrews de- 
rive their cosmogony from Chaldeans ? Is the story 
on the tablets the original from which the Bible story 
of creation was taken ? 

It will, I think, conduce to clearness of thought if 
we state what is necessary to constitute one document 

* As given in the versions of Mr. George Smith and Professors 
Sayce and Lenormant. 



222 GEN'ESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

tlie original of another. 1. It must be older. 2. It 
must treat of the same subject. 3. There must be 
great similarity, amounting almost to identity, in 
thought, language, order of statement, and mode of 
treatment. The first and second are of no importance 
without the third. 

It is said that the great antiquity of the Chaldean 
account establishes its priority over that in our Bible, 
and that the long sojourn of the Hebrews in Babylon 
gave them an opportunity to obtain it from the 
records in that city. It happens, however, that what- 
ever may be the age of the other myths, the Babylonian 
'' creation " is of comparatively. recent date, for, accord- 
ing to Professor Sayce's revised edition of George 
Smith's translation, '^It is evident that in its present 
form it was probably composed in the reign of Assnr- 
banipal, B. C. 6Y0. It breathes throughout the spirit 
of a later age ; its language and style show no trace of 
an Assyrian original ; and the colophon at the end 
implies by its silence that it was not a copy of an 
older document." — Page 56. 

But, admitting that the Chaldean account is suf- 
ficiently ancient, the opposing fact remains that the 
Hebrews, instead of being drawn to the religious belief 
of their conquerors, became bitterly opposed to it 
and to every form of polytheism. And besides, they 
were a proud and exclusive race. They looked down 
with contempt on all the rest of mankind. It seems 



THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF CREATION. 223 

impossible that they not only adopted the story of crea- 
tion from those whose persons, religious beliefs, arid 
ceremonies they hated, and incorporated it into their 
own sacred books, but even gave it the place of honor. 
It seems equally incredible that Assyrian priests, 
the most exclusive of men, were willing to impart > 
their sacred writings to tliose who scouted them and 
their gods. The improbability of their bestowing 
such a gift is exceeded only by the improbability of 
its being accepted. 

To this, however, it may be replied that if the 
Hebrews got the account the improbability is of no 
consequence. We are left, therefore, to an examina- 
tion of the cosmogonies. In them we shall find the 
means of answering the question. If there prove to be 
agreements between them, the probability that one was 
derived from the other, or both from some older docu- 
ment, will be proportioned to the number and char- 
acter of the particulars in which they agree. If these 
are but few, and if they are such as would of necessity 
be found in every cosmogony — if, for example, both 
accounts speak of the heavens, the earth, and sea ; of cat- 
tle and beasts ; of sun, moon, stars, and the like — this 
should have no weight in determining whether the one 
was derived from the other, because, in order to be a 
cosmogony at all, some or all of these things must be 
mentioned. Much more is necessary. It must be 

sliown that the teachings of the two are essentially 
15 



224 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

alike. There may be additions and variations, but 
down under it all there must be substantial agreement. 
It goes without saying that, if there be flat contradiction 
in the fundamental ideas, not in one or two particu- 
lars only but in many, the Hebrew account cannot 
have been derived from the Chaldean. 

Three Chaldean cosmogonies are known. The most 
famous is that styled by Mr. George Smitli '' The 
Babylonian Legend of Creation ; " the second was 
found in what is called " The Tablet of Cutha ; " and 
the third is the story told by Berosus. The first is 
the only one referred to in connection with the story 
in Genesis, probably because it is comparatively free 
from absurdities and monstrosities. Mr. Smith pub- 
lished his translation in 1875. In 1880 Professor 
Sayce published a new edition of Mr. Smith's book, 
" thoroughly revised and corrected." The changes 
introduced by Professor Sayce are very considerable. 
Later yet, Lenorraant, in his Beginnings of History^ 
has given a more readable version, but one which dif- 
fers little from that of Professor Sayce. 

Since the claim that the first chapter of Genesis 
was derived from the Chaldeans is based upon Mr. 
Smith's version I shall give that in full, adding, how- 
ever, in notes or otherwise, the other versions where 
the difference is important enough to warrant it. In 
fact, it is of little consequence which translation is 
used. 



TEE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF CREATION, 225 

1. When above the heavens were not raised,* 

2. And below on the earth not a plant had grown, f 

3. The abyss, also, had not broken open their (sic) boundaries, if 

4. The chaos (or water) Tiamat (the sea) was the mother of them all. 

5. At the beginning those waters were ordained ; § 

6. But not a tree had grown, not a flower had unfolded. ] 

7. When the gods had not sprung up, any one of them j ^ 

8. Not a plant had grown, and order did not exist.** 

9. Then were made also the great gods. 

10. The gods Lakhamu and 

11. Lakhamu they caused to come . . . and they grew. 

12. The gods Sar and Kisar were made 

13. A course of days and a iong time passed . . . 

14. The gods Sar and . . . 

Taking Mr. Smith's version, or one of those in the 
notes, and putting it into plain English, it says that 
at the opening of the account the heavens, earth, and 
sea were in existence ; but that order did not exist 
and there were no gods. The sea was the mother of 
all. The great gods, a pair, were produced first and 
grew to maturity. Another pair, Sar and Kisar, were 
made next. Then a long time passed, after which 
the gods Anu, Bel, and Hea were born of Sar and 
Kisar. This is absolutely all. But Mr. Smith says, 

* Sayce : Were not named. 

f Sayce : Below, the earth by name was not recorded. 

J Sayce : The boundless deep was their generator (father). 

§ Sayce omits at the beginning, and changes the rest to " their 
waters were gathered together in one place." 

I Sayce says : The flowering reed was not gathered ; the marsh 
plant was not grown. Lenormant renders tlie same line by, No 
flock of animals was as yet collected. 

T[ Sayce : Had not been produced. 

** Sayce : By name they had not been called. 



226 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

and so does Professor Sayee, " This corresponds with 
the first two verses of Genesis ! " Corresponds how ? 
In Genesis we read : " In the beginning God created 
the heaven and the earth." The tablet says nothing 
like that. 

We read in Genesis that the earth was w^ithont 
form and void. In the myth we are told that before 
the gods were made order did not exist. At first this 
may seem to be the same as the '' without form ^ and 
void " of Genesis ; but modern science has tauglit us 
that these words describe a condition which actually 
existed while our earth was an unsegregated part of 
the great nebulous mass, and that there never was a 
time when order did not exist. Matter has always 
been obedient to law, w^hether in nebula, sun, or 
planet. Genesis knows nothing of a chaos. Genesis 
says, after the heaven and earth were created dark- 
ness covered the face of the deep, and that the Spirit 
of God moved upon the face of the waters. The 
myth says the great gods were not yet made. The 
water was the mother of them all. In Genesis we 
read : " And God said, Let there be light : and there 
was light." In the myth we read nothing like this ; 
so far as the tablets are concerned light always existed. 

In these few verses of our Genesis there are five 
distinct propositions, and not one of them parallel to 
any thing in the myth ; and only one has the slight- 
* Any of the various meaniDgs of tohu will answer here. 



THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF CREATION. 227 

est resemblance. Instead of similarity there is pro- 
foundest difference. According to the Hebrew ac- 
count, God preceded all things, and he created heaven, 
earth, and sea. The tablet says, the heaven, earth, and 
sea were first ; and at that time '' the great gods had 
not been produced, any one of them." 

The Hebrew account knows but one God ; the 
Chaldean has many gods. The one declares that God 
made the universe ; the other, that the universe made 
the gods. In the one, the beginning is that point in 
the existence of God when the universe began to be ; 
in the other, it is the point in the existence of the 
universe when the gods began to be. It is impossi- 
ble to conceive of two accounts more flatly contradic- 
tory. Unfortunately, the second, third, and fourth 
tablets have not been found. There is, however, a 
fragment which, it is thought, may belong here. I 
give Mr. Smith's version : 

1. When (thou didst make) the foundation of the ground (or cav- 
erns, according to Savce) of rock. 

2. The foundation of the ground (caverns, Sayce) thou didst call 

3. Thou didst beautify the heavens (the heavens were named, 
Sayce), 

4. To the face of the heaven , . , 

5. Thou didst give , . . 

This tablet is so incomplete that it scarcely calls for 
remark. It contains but little, and that little illus- 
trates the character of all the tablets. So far as what 
they say is true it is nothing more than every intel- 



228 



GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 



ligent man of tliat day already knew. The foundations 
of the caverns are indeed of rock, and the heavens are 
beautiful; but this adds no new idea. Every Chal- 
dean knew that as well as the writer of the inscription. 
But in Genesis, in the third period, to which it is 
said this tablet corresponds, there is set forth in no 
Delphian utterance the important fact, only of late 
discovered by geologists, that the waters once covered 
the present dry land. 

The next tablet is the best preserved of all. There 
are many variations in the translations. These are 
important as showing the tentative character of the 
rendering, but are of no special interest so far as the 
question of the origin of the Mosaic account is con- 
cerned. 



Mr. Smith's Yersion. 
It was delightful all that was es- 
tablished by the great gods. 
He * arraDged the stars and caused 
their appearance in (figures) of 
animals, to establish the year 
through observing their constella- 
tions. 

He arranged twelve months of 
stars in three rows, 
from the day when the year com- 
mences to its close. 
He marked the position of the 
planets to shiue in their courses, 



Professor Sayce's Yersion. 

1 (Auu) made suitable the man- 
sions of the (seven) great gods. 

2 The stars he placed in them, 
the lumasi f he fixed. 

3 He arranged the year accord- 
ing to the bounds that he 
defined. 

4 For each of the twelve months, 
three stars he fixed, 

5 from the day when the year 
issues forth to its close. 

6 He established the mansion 
of the god Nibiru, that they 
might know their laws (or 
bounds), 



Probably Ann. 



f A constellation. 



THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF CREATION. 



229 



that they may not injure nor 
trouble any one. 

He fixed the position of the gods 
Bel and Hea with him. 

And he opened the great gates 
which were shrouded in darkness, 

whose fastenings were strong on 
the right hand and on the left. 
In the mass he made a boiling. 

He made the god Uru (the moon) 
to rise out of it. 



The night he overshadowed, to fix 
it also for the light of the night 
until the shining of the day ; 
that the month might not be 
broken, and that it might be reg- 
ular in its amount. 
At the beginning of the month, at 
the rising of the night, 

its horns break through to shine 
in the heavens. 

On the seventh day it begins to 

swell to a circle, 

and stretches farther toward the 

dawn. 

"When the god Shamas (the sun) 

in the horizon of heaven in the 

east . . . 

. . . formed beautifully. 



T that they might not err or de- 
flect at all. 

8 The mansion of Bel and Hea 
he established alone with him- 
self. 

9 He opened also perfectly the 
great gates in the sides of the 
world ; 

10 the bolts he strengthened on 
the left hand and on the right. 

11 In its center also, he made a 
staircase. 

12 The moon-god he caused to 
beautify the thick night, and 
he fixed for it the seasons of 
its nocturnal phases which 
determine the days. 

13 He appointed him also to hin- 
der (or balance) the night that 
the day may be known. 

14 (Saying :) Every month with- 
out break, observe thy circle. 

15 At the beginning of the month 
also, when the night is at its 
height, 

16 (with)the horns thou announc- 
est that the heaven may be 
known. 

17 On the seventh day (thy) cir- 
cle (begins to) fill, 

18 but the half on the right will 
remain open in darkness. 

19 At that time the sun (will be) 
on the horizon of heaven at 
thy rising. 

20 (Thy form) determine, and 
make a (circle?) 

21 (From hence) return (and) ap- 
proach the path of the sun. 



230 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

22 (Then) will the darkness re- 
turn; the sun will change. 

23 . . .seek its road. . . 

24 (Rise and) set, and judge 
judgment. 

. . .the gods on his hearing. 

Tills tablet, according to Mr. Smith, Lenormant, 
and Assyriologists generally, parallels the fourth of 
the creative periods of Genesis. But on comparison 
it will be seen that the resemblance is confined to the 
one fact that both speak of the sun, moon, and stars. 
As to all else the difference is radical. The tablet in 
Mr. Smith's version opens with the statement that all 
that tlie gods had established was delightful. This 
epithet — it is used also in the seventh tablet — corre- 
sponds, in Mr. Smith's opinion, to ''good" in the 
story of Genesis. " Good," when applied to things 
without moral qualities, has but one signification, 
namely, fitness for their proper use or completeness. 
But delightful has no such meaning. It is only a 
synonym for " pleasing ; " and when applied, as in the 
seventh tablet, to monsters, is simply burlesque. 
Professor Sayce substitutes "suitable," and Lenor- 
mant says ''excellent." Both of these improve the 
sense ; but either takes from the tablet what has been 
claimed as a proof that the Hebrews took their ac- 
count from this source. But the difference here be- 
tween Genesis and the tablet is more profound than a 
matter of words. In the former the Creator is repre- 



THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF CREATION 231 

sented as surveying his work and pronouncing it 
good. In the tablets there is no creator, but only an 
arranger, or arrangers, of what already existed. And 
it is not they who pronounce the mansions of the 
gods and the monsters " pleasing," or " suitable," or 
" excellent," whatever the correct rendering may be, 
but it is the writer of the story. 

Even in the order of its statements the tablet is 
antipodal to Genesis. The one speaks of the stars 
first, then of the moon, and last of the sun. The 
other reverses this, and tells of the sun and moon, 
and then of the stars. In Genesis we read that 
God made them all. In the myth they are eternal. 
The creation of the universe — a beginning to the 
" everlasting hills " — was an idea to which the writer 
of the tablets had not risen. In his belief, Anu 
merely arranged the stars and caused the already ex- 
istent moon to come from its place in the center of 
the earth, while the sun was in no way affected by 
him or any of the other gods. The myth says that 
Anu established the year through observing constel- 
lations of the stars. In Genesis the stars have no 
part to perform for our earth. It is the ''great 
lights " that are to be for signs and for seasons, for 
days and years. In the tablet we read : " He marked 
the position of the planets in their courses, that they 
may not injure or trouble any one." How thoroughly 
this is saturated with the astrological notion then and 



232 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

for centuries later so prevalent, that tlie stars exert 
an influence over men for good or for evil ! There 
is nothing like this in Genesis. 

Nearly all the rest of the tablet refers to the moon 
and its duties. It is to beautify the night and to 
make the month. To the moon the greatest promi- 
nence is given by the writer of the tablet, for to the 
Chaldeans the month was not only the most natural 
division of time, next to days, but, from its connec- 
tion with religious ceremonies, the most important. 
Nothing, therefore, was more natural, and every way 
fitting, than that, in a cosmogony manufactured to 
meet the needs of their religion and their science, the 
month should occupy the most prominent place ; and 
so it does in the Chaldean story ; but in the Genesis 
account it is not even named. It is incomprehensible 
that a Hebrew, to whom the month was of as great 
religions importance as to the Chaldeans, should have 
copied their account and omitted all about that meas- 
ure of time. What has been said about the character 
of the physical statements in the previous tablets ap- 
plies with equal force to this. So far as they concern 
what all can see they are commonplace platitudes. 
As to all else, they are absurd fables. 

In the first few lines there is the setting forth of 
the beginning of an astronomy, or rather an astrology, 
which had noted the year, divided the stars into con- 
stellations, and traced the paths of the planets. This 



THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF CREATION. 283 

is of value as evidence that men had begun to study 
the heavens and to record the results of their observa- 
tions, but has nothing to do with any thing in the 
first chapter of Genesis. 

The tablet also tells us of the moon, that " at the 
beginning of the month, at the rising of the night, 
its horns break through to shine in the heavens. 
On the seventh day it begins to swell to a circle, and 
stretches farther toward the dawn." This is Mr. 
Smith's version. Professor Sayce's is almost unin- 
telligible. I need not say this, too, has no counter- 
part in Genesis. 

Unfortunately, the rest of the tablet is so defaced 
that little can be made of it. Enough can be read in 
Mr. Smith's version to show that it tells something 
about the sun-god. But according to Professor 
Sayce it is doubtful whether any thing was intended 
to be said about the sun, except as to its position rela- 
tive to the moon. Indeed, the Babylonians honored 
the moon more than the sun, even making the sun- 
god the child of the moon-god. It was natural, there- 
fore, to say less about it. 

The sixth tablet has not been found. 

The seventh tablet. " This," Professor Sayce says, 
" is probably represented by a fragment found by Mr. 
Smith in one of the trenches at Kouyun jik." He trans- 
lates it as follows. The diflEerences between this and 
Mr. Smith's and Lenormant's versions are unimportant. 



234 GENESIS I. AKD MODERN SCIENCE. 

At that time the gods in their assembly created . . . 

They made suitable (or pleasing or excellent) the strong mon- 
sters ... 

They caused to come living creatures. . . 

Cattle of the field, beasts of the field, and creeping things of the 
field... 

They fixed for the living creatures . . . 

. . .cattle and creeping things of the city they fixed. . . 

. . .the assembly of the creeping things, the whole which were cre- 
ated ... 

. . . which in the assembly of my family. . . 

. . .and the god Nin-si-ku (the lord of the noble face) joined the two 
together. . . 

. . .to the assembly of the creeping things I gave life. . . 

. . . the seed of Lakhamu I destroyed . . . 

In this fi-agment is to be seen a slight verbal re- 
semblance to one of the statements in Genesis. The 
gods, the myth says, made " cattle, beasts, and creep- 
ing things ; " and Genesis says, God made '' beasts, 
cattle, and creeping things." But if the authors of 
these two accounts were to speak of land animals at 
all it is diflScult to see how they could avoid that 
much of agreement. The latter part of the tablet is 
so badly mutilated, and, in its present condition, so 
nearly meaningless, that it calls for no remark. 

There is an important difference winch runs through 
the two accounts to which I have already alluded. It 
shows how widely their respective authors differed in 
the manner of thinking and speaking, the one of his 
God, the other of his gods. In Genesis the Deity 
is represented as announcing in advance his work in 
successive fiats — '' God said, let there be " precedes 



THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF CREATION 285 

eacli creative act; and when the fiat has been obeyed 
God surveys his work and pronounces it "good." 
But all through these mytlis the gods are dumb. As 
blind forces they do certain things ; but they utter no 
fiat, announce no purpose, speak no approval. 

These are all the tablets that, with any great prob- 
ability, can be said to belong to this series. There is, 
however, a more doubtful fragment which Mr. Smith 
thinks belongs here. He gives it, however, under 
reserve. Professor Sayce says: "It is more than 
doubtful whether it has any thing to do with the cre- 
ation tablets. It seems rather to be a local legend 
relating to Assur, the old capital of Assyria, and pos- 
sibly recording the legend of its foundation. Bit-sarra 
(the place spoken of in the inscription) or E-sarra, ' the 
temple of the legions,' was dedicated to Ninip." "^ 

I copy the fragment here that nothing of possible 
value may be omitted. I give Professor Sayce's ver- 
sion. Lenormant says he knows nothing of it, and 
merely quotes Mr. Smith's rendering: 

The god Khir...Si. .. 

At that time to the trod. . . 

So be it, I concealed thee. . . 

From the day that thou . . . 

Angry thou didst speak. . . 

The god Assur opened his mout?i and spake to the god. . . 

Above the deep, the seat of . . . 

In front of Bit-sarra, which I have made . . . 

* Chaldean Genesis, revised edition, p. 63. 



236 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

Below the place I strengthen. . . 

Let there be made also Bit-Lusu, tlie seat. . . 

Within it his stronghold may he build and. . . 

At that time from the deep he raised. . . 

The place . . . lifted up I made . . . 

Above . . . heaven . . . 

The place. . .lifted up thou didst make. 

. . .the city of Assur the temples of the great gods . . . his father 

Anu . . . 

The god. . .thee and over all that thy hand has made 

. . .thee, having over the earth which thy hand lias made 

. . .having Assur which thou hast called its name. 

Whatever this may be, it has no connection with 
the first chapter of Genesis. 

Mr. Smith styles this account " The Story of Crea- 
tion in Days," and others have adopted tlie name. 
It is difficult to see the propriety of so doing. Tliere 
is no aUusion in it to days in connection with creative 
periods. Tliere is nothing like the Hebrew order, 
first day, second day, third day, and so on. Indeed, 
the word does not occur in any sense, except once in 
the first tablet, wliere it says, wlien giving the origin 
of the gods, " Sar and Kisar were made next. The 
days were long, a long (time passed), and" tlien the 
gods Anu, Bel, and Hea were born of Sar and Kisar." 
Rev. Mr. Cheyne says, in his article in the EncydcrpcBdia 
Britannica^ that the day clauses in Genesis are inter- 
polations, but of this he offers no proof. It seems 
only a random assertion to get rid of a difficulty in 
the way of a favorite theory. 

To sum up the w^hole matter. The story in Gene- 



THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF CREATION. 237 

sis and that on the tablets have the following points 
in common : 1. The subjects treated of, namely, sun, 
moon, stars, earth, and animals of the land. 2. Cattle 
and beasts came into being by the act of a god. 
Tliese points of agreement are so few and of such a 
character that it would be impossible to write a cos- 
mogony wdthout them. Hence they prove nothing. 
The differences between the two accounts are many 
and vital. The Chaldean is almost wholly occupied 
with the genealogy and mythical deeds of the gods ; 
indeed, it seems intended for a theogony rather than 
a cosmogony. In the Hebrew this is all absent. It 
opens with God in existence, and the heavens and 
earth not in existence. The Chaldean is just the op- 
posite.' It opens with heavens and earth in existence, 
and the gods are not yet made. The Hebrew repre- 
sents God as the Creator of the universe. The Chal- 
dean represents the sea, a part of the universe, as 
producing the gods, and the gods not as creators, but 
merely as givers of order and law to a universe in 
which '' order did not exist." The Hebrew represents 
God as announcing his purposes in a series of fiats. 
The Chaldean gods announce nothing. The Hebrew 
represents God as himself seeing the things done and 
pronouncing them " good." In the Chaldean the gods 
utter no verdict of approval ; where it does occur it 
is the writer, and not the deities, who pronounces 
the mansions '^suitable." The Chaldean tells of a 



2S8 GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

time when order did not exist ; the Hebrew tells of no 
sucli time, but every-wliere represents matter, like a 
disciplined cohort, moving to the word of its com- 
mander. The Hebrew tells us of a first day and night. 
The Chahlean regards tlie sei'ies of day and night as 
eternal. The Hebrew is divided into stages of prog- 
ress separated by numbered days. The Chaldean 
know^s nothing of numbered days. Genesis makes the 
year to depend on the two great lights. The Chal- 
dean makes it depend wholly upon the stars. In 
Genesis the stars are barely mentioned. In the 
Chaldean account they occupy the most prominent 
position. In Genesis, chapters one and two, the month 
is not so much as named. In the myth the month is 
the chief measure of time. 

These differences, I submit, are not only profoundly 
important, but are of such a character as to forbid the 
belief that they are the result of the editing, by some 
skillful monotheistic redacteur^ of the story of the 
tablets. There is, in the story which we have, nothing 
from the first tablet. The second fragment, which tells 
the reader that the foundation of the caverns is made of 
rr^ck, has left no trace of itself in the Hebrew" account. 
The third recovered tablet tells of a god who made 
stairs and bolted gates, or made a boiling from w^iich 
the moon arose. The ancient redacteur has not incor- 
porated any of this, nor, indeed, any part of what is on 
the tablet, into the story which we have in our Bible. 



THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF CREATION 239 

In the next recovered fragment there seems to be a 
statement that the gods made cattle, beasts, and creep- 
ing things. A similar statement is found in our 
Genesis. 

And this is all. 

Of the three requirements to prove the Chaldean 
inscription the source of the Hebrew story of crea- 
tion, the first, priority, is very doubtful ; the second, 
identity of subject, although questionable — for the 
account on the tablets seems to be intended for a the- 
ogony instead of a cosmogony — may be admitted 
under protest ; while the third, identity of statement, 
order, and thought, is wholly lacking. 

16 



240 GENESIS L AND MODERN SCIENCE. 



THIS ACCOUNT NOT THE WORK OF SOME 
ANCIENT SCIENTIST. 



There lias lately fallen under my observation a 
little book intended to show the absurdity of the Mosaic 
account of creation when viewed from a scientific 
stand-point. It says : " Present it to us as the specu- 
lation of some early philosopher who strives with his 
limited knowledge to conceive how the universe came 
into its present condition, and we can, of course, accept 
it as such and treat it accordingly. Taking the views 
that were held by the people generally at the time this 
story was written, we can see how the writer came to 
make it as we find it. The earth was then regarded 
as the most important body in the universe ; the stars 
were shining points, and the sun and moon about as 
large as they look to be ; and the whole account re- 
flects this view.'' 

The reader will please note this " view." Without 
doubt it did really prevail among the most advanced 
minds in the time of Moses, and all men, however they 
maj^ regard the account in Genesis, believe that it did. 
But when it is seen that this narrative is in accordance 
with the most advanced science of the present day 
there will be a change of front on the part of those 



NOT THE WORK OF SOME ANCIENT SCIENTIST. 241 

who can believe any thing but a revelation. We 
shall then be told that the Mosaic account of creation 
is only the embodiment of a more ancient science. 
The difficulties which arise from a total lack of histor- 
ical evidence in favor of such an hypothesis, as well as 
from the abundant evidence to the contrary, will be 
avoided by claiming that this knowledge was the re- 
mains of a culture which had become so lost at the time 
when Moses wrote that he himself did not compre- 
hend it, but took the account bodily from some manu- 
script handed down from an inconceivably more remote 
period. It is true that such an answer involves the 
objectors in the difficult task of harmonizing with it 
all that is said to have been proved about man's prog- 
ress from the paleolithic age and the cave life ; but 
this is an obstacle which a resolute disbeliever in a 
revelation can easily get over by saying that very little 
is known of the early man, and that perhaps after all 
he has been underrated. It will be amusing to see how 
certain writers will eat their own words. For they 
must admit that ability to relate so many actual occur- 
rences in the world's history, to place them in their 
proper order, and to divide the story into six parts, eacli 
corresponding to a natural and philosophical stage of 
progress in the liistory of the world, implies on the 
part of the author of the account — we dare not say how 
much knowledge of astronomy and geology, the rela- 
tion of light to motion,* and the revelations of the 



242^ GENESIS I. AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

spectroscope. To maintain that some ancient people, 
of whom not the slightest trace remains, attained 
such height of knowledge, we must assume that in the 
hitherto unheard-of past tliere was reached a progress 
in science such as has only lately been gained by 
moderns. 

Sucli progress was impossible without modern meth- 
ods and appliances. There was needed a system of nota- 
tion and numeration equivalent to that which we en jo}^, 
together with a calculus wliich anticipated Newton's, 
and logarithms thousands of years before Napier's, 
as well as telescopes and spectroscopes and instru- 
ments of precision. There are indications, also, of a 
knowledge of geography, botany, and geology. All 
this could be gained only by the co-operation of many 
individuals, not in one or two localities, but over the 
world. Hence this ancient and most remarkable peo- 
ple must have had the means of communication with 
other peoples. The necessary observations could not 
have been made in a single life-time, and therefore 
they needed to be preserved and in some way made 
accessible to all who desired to labor upon them and 
deduce their proper teachings ; for in no other way 
could any great amount of information be got out of 
them. Hence the art of printing, or some equivalent, 
was essential. In short, the power to write this chap- 
ter required on tlie part of its author our present 
science and all that that implies. 



NOT THE WORK OF SOME ANCIENT SCIENTIST. 248 

But all this may be claimed for that ancient civili- 
zation, since, according to our objector, no one knows 
how long man has existed, and therefore no one can 
say how many civilizations have culminated and per- 
ished. Such arguments, being unhampered by facts, 
may assume a thousand forms. Nor will it be deemed 
an answer to remind the objector that his present 
position is in flat contradiction to his former teach- 
ings. The inconsistency will neither silence nor abash 
him. His arguments can be effectually met only by 
the internal evidence of the account itself. 

A careful analysis will show that it could not have 
been written by one who obtained his knowledge as 
scientists obtain theirs. They must ascend by gener- 
alization, rising from particulars to universals, reach- 
ing step by step from the known to the unknown. 
Hence, by the very nature and requirement of makih^ 
progress at all, they acquire the habit of looking only 
to physical causes, and through phenomena to some 
general law that binds them into forms and groups 
which a finite mind can remember and handle. 
Therefore one of their greatest needs is the mnemo- 
techny of an exact and copious terminology, the lack 
of which would render progress, beyond moderate 
limits, impossible, for the mind would break down 
under the burden of an infinite number of unclassified 
facts. 

In this account there are none of those peculiarities 



244 GENESIS I AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

which mark the scientific mind ; no generahzations ; 
no laws; no underlying causes; no deductions; no 
special terminology. The writer passes at a step 
beyond and through all laws to the Intelligent Cause 
whose personality so permeates every verse as to ren- 
der its elimination impossible. His language is as op- 
posite to technical as can be conceived ; but while it is 
phenomenal it is more than the phenomenal descrip- 
tion of a mere eye-witness. It bears in itself evidence 
of being the work of One who exhaustively under- 
stood the import and the order of all phenomena, and 
from an infinite abundance selected those suited to 
his purpose. These he has recorded in accurate lan- 
guage, leaving the reader to derive from them all 
that his capabilities permit. He says nothing of the 
nebular hypothesis, but he says that once the earth 
was without form and void; nothing of the correla- 
tion of forces, and nothing of their relation to light, 
but he places the beginning of motion between the 
primordial darkness and the first light ; nothing of 
the earth's long progress through self-luminous periods 
to its present condition, a solid opaque planet, but he 
names the fact that marks the close of the one condi- 
tion and the beginning of the other, a fact that fits 
in nowhere else. In short, every word and every 
phrase indicates a knowledge not cramped within the 
narrow limits of scientific formulas, but as free and 
suggestive as Nature herself. 



NOT THE WORK OF SOME ANCIENT SCIENTIST, 245 



To believe that such a statement as this is the frag- 
ment of some ancient work evolved, as are now 
astronomy, geology, and other sciences, by the slow" 
collection and study of facts, does violence to the laws 
of onr mental being. 



THE EXD. > 



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Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

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Cranberry Township PA 16066 
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.^22 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process i 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide ; 
Treatment Date: May 2005 j 

PreservationTechnologie: i 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIO j 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Dnve 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



